(FLOW'S  PAMPHLETS 


x^ 


s 


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The  Influence  of  Antivivisec- 
tion  on  Character 


W.     W.     KEEN,     M.D. 

PHILADELPHIA 


DEFENSE   OF   RESEARCH 
PAMPHLET    XXIV 


Issued  by  the  Bureau  on  Protection  of  Medical  Research 

of  the  Council  on  Health  and  Public  Instruction  of 

the  American  Medical  Association 


"The  humanity  which  would  prevcDt  human  suffering  is  a  deeper 
and  truer  humanity  than  the  humanity  which  would  save  pain  or 
death  to  animals." — Charles  W.  Eliot. 


CHICAGO 

American  Medical  Association 

Five  Hundred  and  Thirty-Five  Dearborn  Avexle 

1912 


PAMPHLETS  IN  THIS  SERIES 


Pamphlet  I. — Vaccination  and  Its  Relation  to  Animal  Experi- 
mentation, by  Dr.  J.  F.  Schaniberg,  Philadelphia.    56  pp.    Illustrated. 

Pamphlet  II. — Animal  Experimentation  and  Tuberculosis,  by  Dr. 
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Pamphlet  III. — The  Role  of  Animal  Experimentation  in  the  Diag- 
nosis of  Disease,  by  Dr.  M.  J.  Rosenau,  Washington,  D.  C.     8  pages. 

Pamphlet  IV. — Animal  Experimentation  and  Cancer,  by  Dr. 
James  Ewing,  New  York.     12  pages. 

Pamphlet  V. — The  Ethics  of  Animal  Experimentation,  by  Prof. 
J.  R.  Angell,  Chicago.     8  pages. 

Pamphlet  VI. — Animal  Experimentation :  The  Protection  It 
Affords  to  Animals  Themselves  and  Its  Value  to  the  Live-Stock 
Industry,  by  Dr.  V.  A.  Moore,  Itbaca,  N.  Y.     20  pages. 

Pamphlet  VII. — Rabies  and  Its  Relation  to  Animal  Experimenta- 
tion, by  Dr.  L.  Frothingham,  Boston.     16  pages. 

Pamphlet  VIII. — Importance  of  Animal  Experimentation  in  the 
Development  of  Knowledge  of  Dysentery,  Cholera  and  Typhoid 
Fever,  by  Dr.  M.  W.  Richardson,  Boston.    S  pages. 

Pamphlet  IX. — Fruits  of  Medical  Research  with  Aid  of  Anes- 
thesia and  Asepticism,  by  Dr.  Charles  W.  Eliot,  Boston.     16  pages. 

Pamphlet  X. — Animal  Experimentation  in  Relation  to  Our 
Knowledge  of  Secretions,  Especially  Internal  Secretions,  by  Dr.  S.  J. 
Meltzer,  New  York.     32  pages. 

Pamphlet  XL — Animal  Experimentation  and  Protozoan  Tropical 
Diseases,  by  Dr.  Harry  T.  Marshall,  Charlottesville,  Va.    20  pages. 

Pamphlet  XII. — Modern  Antiseptic  Surgery  and  the  Role  of 
Experiment  in  Its  Discovery  and  Development,  by  Dr.  W.  W.  Keen, 
Philadelphia.     20  pages. > 

Pamphlet  XIII. — Animal  Experimentation  in  Relation  to  Prac- 
tical Medical  Knowledge  of  the  Circulation,  by  Dr.  Joseph  Erlanger, 
Madison,  Wis.    40  pages. 

Pamphlet  XIV. — What  Vivisection  Has  Done  for  Humanity,  by 
Dr.  W.  W.  Keen,  Philadelphia.     16  pages. 

Pamphlet  XV.- — The  Relation  of  Animal  Experimentation  to  Our 
Knowledge  of  Plague,  by  George  W.  McCoy,  San  Francisco.     12  pages. 

Pamphlet  XVI. — Medical  Control  of  Vivisection,  by  Dr.  Walter 
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ley. Cal.     20  pages. 

Pamphlet   XVIII. — Obstetrics   and   Animal    Experimentation,    by 
1    Dr.  J.  Whitridge  Williams,  Baltimore.    36  pages. 

Pamphlet  XIX. — Some  Characteristics  of  Antivivisection  Litera- 
ture, by  Dr.  Walter  B.  Cannon,  Boston.     16  pages, 
j        Pamfhlet  XX. — The  Value  of  Animal  Experimentation  as  Illus- 
!    trated  by  Recent  Advances  in  the  Study  of  Syphilis,  by  Dr.   J.  W. 
Churchman,  Baltimore.     24  pages. 

Pamphlet  XXI. — Animal  Experimentation  and  Epidemic  Cerebro- 
;    spinal  Meningitis,  by  Dr.  C.  H.  Dunn,  Boston.     28  pages. 

Pamphlet  XXII. — Animal  Experimentation  and  Diphtheria,,  by 
Dr.  W.  H.  Park,  New  York.    19  pages. 

Pamphlet  XXIII. — Animal  Experimentation  and  Its  Benefits  to 
Mankind,  by  Dr.  Walter  B.  Cannon,  Boston.     24  pages. 

Pamphlet  XXIV. — The  Influence  of  Antivivisection  on  Character, 
by  Dr.  W.  W.  Keen,  Philadelphia.    43  pages. 

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The  Influence  of  Antivivisection  on 
Character 


W.     W.     KEEJf,     M.D. 

PHILADELPHIA 


l/yCVZ^  - 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2012  with  funding  from 
Duke  University  Libraries 


http://www.archive.org/details/influenceofantivOOkeen 


THE   INFLUENCE    OF   AXTIVIYISECTIOX    ON 
CHARACTER  * 


W.     W.     KEEN,     M.D. 

PHILADELPHIA 


"In  this  controversy  [vivisection]  there  should  be  no  bitter- 
ness. .  .  .  Do  not  let  us  attempt  to  browbeat  or  call 
names.  .  .  .  Vivisection  tends  to  weaken  character.  .  . 
Nothing  which  hurts  the  character  can  be  right." — Rev.  Dr. 
Floyd  W.  Tomkins,  President  of  the  American  Antivivisection 
Society,  in  the  Ladies'  Home  Journal,  March,  1910. 

I  accept  the  test  proposed  by  Dr.  Tomkins,  and.  quoted 
in  the  above  motto,  "Nothing  which  hurts  the  character 
can  be  right."  Let  us,  therefore,  stud}'  what  is  the 
effect  of  antivivisection  on  the  character  of  its  advocates. 

I.   VIOLENT    PASSIOXS   AROUSED   BY   AXTIVIVISECTIOX 
AGITATIOX 

The  most  violent  and  vindictive  passions  have  been 
aroused  and  fostered,  especially  among  women  —  the 
very  flower  of  our  modern  civilization.  Let  us  see 
whether  they  have  shown  "bitterness"  or  "called  names." 
I  have  rejected  much  oral  testimony  I  could  use  and 
have  drawn  my  evidence  from  only  a  very  small  portion 
of  the  literature  at  my  disposal. 

Herewith  I  reproduce  (Fig.  1)  the  photograph  of  a 
remarkable  letter  which  contains  an  asserted  prayer  to 
the  Deity  calling  down  curses  by  "a  dozen  women''  on 
my  long-since  sainted  mother.  It  needs  no  comment 
from  me  save  that  the  "horror"  mentioned  in  this  letter 
was  excited  by  an  article  which  I  published  in  the 
Ladies'  Home  Journal  for  April,  1910.  in  which  I 
recited  a  few  of  the  benefits  to  humanity  which  had 
resulted  from  vivisection.  The  only  clue  even  to  the 
place  from  which  the  letter  comes  is  the  postmark.  • 

*  An  address  read  before  the  Surgical  Section  of  the  Suffolk  Dis- 
trict Medical  Society.  Boston,  March  20,  1912.  Reprinted  by  the 
kind  permission  of  the  editor  and  the  publisher  from  the  Boston 
Medical  and  Surgical  Journal,  May  2  and  9,   1912. 


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Let  me  quote  another  earlier  anonymous  letter  I  have 
before  me.  This  is  from  Philadelphia.  Instead  of  the 
usual  address  "Dear  Sir/'  it  begins,  "You  Fiend."  I 
had  not  then  been  promoted  to  "Arch-fiend"  in  Satan's 
Hierarchy.  The  writer  exclaims,  "Oh,  that  you  all 
could  be  put  through  the  same  torture  that  you  inflict 
on  these  helpless  ones."  As  I  am  not  a  vivisectionist 
this  ardent  wish  fails  to  terrify.  I  am  an  advocate  of 
vivisection  because  I  know  how  greatly  it  has  helped 
me  during  all  my  professional  life  in  saving  life  and 
lessening  suffering.1 

If  two  letters  will  not  convince,  here  is  a  third.  This, 
from  Baltimore,  also  the  result  of  the  same  article,  was 
from  a  writer  who  had  the  courage  to  sign  her  name 
and  address. 

"You  would  appear  even  the  more  fiendish  on  account 
of  your  superior  intelligence.  .  .  .  The  future  of  a 
vivisectionist  is  a  veritable  hell.  You,  I  understand, 
are  a  man  advanced  in  years  [the  calendar,  alas !  seems 
to  justify  this  shocking  statement]  soon  to  go  before 
the  bar  of  justice.  Can  you  meet  your  God  with  the 
terrible  cries  ringing  in  your  ears  of  these  creatures,  our 
helpless  brothers,  made  by  his  hand,  that  you  have  drawn 
and  quartered?  How  they  must  haunt  you.  .  .  . 
When  your  time  comes  to  die,  every  cry  of  pain  and 
anguish  that  you  have  been  the  cause  of  producing  in 
these  helpless  creatures  will  follow  you  to  the  depths 

1.  In  the  American  Journal  of  the  Medical  Sciences  for  July, 
1865,  p.  67,  Dr.  S.  Weir  Mitchell,  the  late  Dr.  Morehouse  and  I  pub- 
lished a  paper  on  the  "Antagonism  of  Atropia  and  Morphia.''  based 
on  observations  and  experiments  in  the  Army  Hospital  for  Injuries 
and  Diseases  of  the  Nervous  System.  The  reason  which  caused  us  to 
make  this  investigation  was  tbat  we  desired  to  find  better  means  for 
"soothing  the  pain  of  those  terrible  cases  of  neuralgia"  following 
gunshot-wounds  of  large  nerves.  These  are  accurately  described  in 
the  paper  as  causing  "anguish"  and  "agony" — no  word  could  be 
too  strong.  Accordingly,  in  our  efforts  we  tried  a  number  of  com- 
mon and  Fome  uncommon  drugs,  and  finally  found  that  morphin  (the 
active  principle  of  opium)  was  the  best  remedy  and  yet  had  many 
disadvantages.  Ultimately  we  found  that  by  combining  with  it  a 
certain  amount  of  atropin  (the  active  principle  of  belladonna)  we 
obtained  the  best  results.  The  facts  discovered  in  our  investigations 
have  long  since  become  merged  in  the  common  knowledge  of  the 
profession,  and  standard  tablets  with  different  proportions  of  the 
two  drugs  are  manufactured  and  used  all  over  the  world.  Most  of 
our  patients  operated  on  (entirely  by  hypodermic  injections)  were 
sorely  in  need  of  relief.  A  few  were  convalescents.  In  all  cases  we 
avoided  telling  them  what  drug  was  being  used,  for  every  one  knows 
how  imagination,  fear  or  other  emotion  would  alter  the  rate  of  the 
pulse  or  of  the  breathing.  Not  one  man  was  injured  in  the  least. 
Not  one  ever  complained.  Many  thousands  of  human  beings  have 
been  greatly  benefited  and  many  lives  have  been  saved  through  the 
knowledge  thus  obtained. 

I  have  expressly  mentioned  these  facts  in  some  detail  because  we 
have  been  attacked  in  their  pamphlets  by  the  antivivksectionists  for 
these  experiments,  which  are  described  as  "human  vivisection." 


6 

of  hell."  Yet  I  have  "drawn  and  quartered"  not  even 
so  much  as  a  mouse. 

But  this  same  lady  tells  me  that  she  had  survived  one 
of  the  most  serious  abdominal  operations  that  could  be 
clone  —  a  hysterectomy.  This  operation  was  so  perilous 
that  until  Lister  had  devised  the  antiseptic  method  it 
was  never  even  thought  possible,  and  its  success  at  the 
present  day  is  due  chiefly  to  experiment  on  animals. 
The  writer  of  the  letter,  therefore,  is  herself  a  witness 
to  the  benefit  of  vivisection. 

Later  on  she  says,  "If  they  would  only  use  vivisectors 
for  their  experiments,  it  would  soon  be  considered 
unnecessary."  Her  gentlest  wish,  therefore,  is  for 
human  vivisection,  and  doubtless  "without  anesthetics." 
Per  contra,  in  the  newspapers  of  May  6,  1911,  a  dispatch 
states  that  seventeen  medical  students  had  offered  them- 
selves for  experimental  inoculation  with  cancer,  an  offer 
which  was,  of  course,  refused,  as  animals  can  be  used. 

A  curious  "statement  in  the  letter  is,  "I  understand 
the  Eockefeller  Institute  has  had  four  or  five  of  its 
laboratories  burned,  the  animals  destroyed,  rather  than 
have  them  fall  into  the  bands  of  these  wretches,  and  if 
this  thing  were  more  widely  known,  every  medical  college 
in  the  country  would  be  razed  to  the  ground  and  the 
doctors  tarred  and  feathered."  The  insurance  companies, 
I  am  quite  certain,  have  never  heard  of  the  one  laboratory 
which  the  Eockefeller  Institute  possesses  having  been 
burned.  But  what  a  strange  exhibition  of  kindness  it 
is  to  gloat  over  the  fact  that  the  poor  animals  in  these 
supposed  laboratories  had  been  roasted  to  death  "without 
anesthetics." 

If  three  instances  are  not  sufficient,  here  is  a  fourth 
—  a  signed  letter  from  Chicago.  Beferring  to  one  case 
which  I  had  published  as  an  illustration  of  the  value 
of  vivisection  in  saving  human  life,  she  says,  "My 
sympathy  for  the  parents  of  that  young  man  .  .  . 
would  have  been  deep,  but  not  so  keen  as  for  a  mother 
dog  who  saw  her  puppy  tortured  to  death  on  a  dissecting 
table.  .  .  .  Even  if  you  did  save  a  man's  life,  was 
it  worth  while?"  (Italics  in  the  letter!)  This  lady 
wrongly  assumes  that  the  puppy  was  "tortured  to  death," 
i.  e.,  without  anesthetics.  This,  I  am  glad  to  say,  is  not 
true,  as  I  shall  show  later  on.  To  her  question,  "Was  it 
worth  while?"  I  can  only  say,  "Ask  his  father  and 
mother." 


And  this  is  the  ennobling  influence  of  antivivisection ! 

A  fifth  communication  is  from  a  lady  who  was  per- 
sonally acquainted  with  myself  and  my  family.  She 
sent  me  a  pamphlet  with  some  good  advice,  ending  with 
the  terse  injunction.  "Do  God's  work,  not  the  Devil's/' 
and  had  the  courage  to  sign  her  name. 

A  sixth  lady  sent  me  (anonymously)  an  article  from 
one  of  our  magazines,  with  many  marginal  annotations 
and  much  underscoring.  From  this  I  select  a  few 
sentences. 

"Millions  of  people  regard  him  [the  vivisector]  with 
loathing,  and  shudder  with  horror  at  his  name.  .  .  . 
Frightful  as  the  sufferings  of  this  tortured  dog  must  be. 
I  would  rather  be  in  its  place  than  yours  when  your 
soul  is  summoned  to  its  final  judgment  to  receive 
judgment  without  mercy.  [This  seems  to  be  a  favorite 
threat  of  my  correspondents.]  May  God  so  deal  with 
every  fiend  incarnate  who  has  thus  tortured  defenseless 

creatures All   the   demons    and   fiends   do 

not  dwell  in  Hades.  Some  are  made  in  the  image  of 
God,  but  have  hearts  blacker  and  more  cruel  than  the 
arch-fiend  himself.  These  are  the  vivisectors  who 
'benefit'  mankind." 

I  have  received  very  many  more  such  letters  —  usually 
anonymous.     These  six  may  serve  as  samples. 

I  would  willingly  accept  the  supposition  of  unbalanced 
minds  as  an  explanation  and  palliation  for  such  letters 
but  for  their  number  and  for  the  fact  that  they  so 
entirely  coincide  with  almost  all  the  "repulsive  litera- 
ture" (to  use  Lord  Coleridge's  words)  published  by  the 
various  antivivisection  societies. 

A  brief  search  through  only  a  part  of  my  file  of  this 
antivivisection  literature  enables  me  to  cull  the  following 
evidences  of  a  similar  debasing  violence  and  vindictive- 
ness.    The  list  could  easily  be  extended. 

"The  art  of  torture  has  been  carried  to  a  perfection 
which  the  devildoms  of  Spain  in  the  old  days  of  the 
Inquisition  could  not  equal  in  ingenuity  or  pitilessness." 

'"Vivisection  is  the  anguish,  the  hell  of  science.  All 
the  cruelty  which  the  human  or  rather  the  inhuman 
heart  is  capable  of  inflicting  is  in  this  one  word.  Below 
it  there  is  no  depth.  This  word  lies  like  a  coiled  serpent 
at  the  bottom  of  the  abyss." 

"Animals  are  dissected  alive  —  usually  without  the 
use  of  anesthetics." 

"The  vivisector  keeps  his  victim  alive  while  he  cuts 
it  up." 


8 


"Vivisection  founded  on  cruelty,  supported  by  false- 
hood, and  practiced  for  selfish  ends." 

"The  vivisector  is  less  valuable  to  the  world  than  the 
animals  he  destroys." 

"A  thing  I  know  to  be  damnable  whatever  the  results." 

"An  organized  system  of  barbarity." 

"Vivisector  and  criminal  become  interchangeable 
terms." 

"Cowards  who  perpetrate  hideous  crimes." 

"Experiments  on  living  animals  is  a  system  of  long- 
protracted  agonies,  the  very  recollection  of  which  is 
enough  to  make  the  soul  sick  as  if  with  a  whiff  and  an 
after-taste  of  a  moral  sewer." 

"Impious  barbarity  of  the  vivisector." 

"All  other  forms  of  sinful  cruelty  are  comparatively 
trifling  compared  with  the  horrors  of  vivisection." 

"Deliberate  dabbling  in  blood  and  agony. " 

"Cruelty  the  inevitable  and  odious  spawn  of  secret 
vivisection." 

"Blood-stained  hands  of  the  grim  tormentors." 

"Bloody  mass  of  agony." 

"Devilish  inventions  of  unbalanced  mentality." 

At  a  hearing  before  a  committee  of  the  Legislature 
of  Pennsylvania,  I  heard  myself  and  others  who  were 
advocating  the  humane  work  of  vivisection  called 
"hyenas"  by  a  woman. 

Briefer  descriptive  terms  are  as  follows : 


scientific  hells 
torture-house 
osgj  of  cruelty 
halls  of  agony 
inhuman  devil 
devils  incarnate 
scientific  murder 
abominable  sin 
devilish  science 
fiends  incarnate 
damnably  mean 
arch-fiend 
master  demon 
diabolical  vivisection 


temples  of  torment, 
cruelty  of  cruelties 
infernal  work 
hellish  wrong- 
devil's  work 
lust  of  cruelty 
scientific  assassination 
torture  of  the  innocent 
black  art  of  vivisection 
satanie 
fiends 

human  monsters 
demons 


Antivivisection  writers  nearly  always  state,  assume  or 
imply  that  all  experiments  are  "tortures,"  i.  e.,  that 
anesthetics  are  not  used.     This  is  wholly  erroneous. 

In  Great  Britain,  where  all  experiments  are  returned 
to  the  government,  the  following  table  for  1906  (the 
latest  I  happen  to  have)  will  show  how  utterly  inde- 
fensible is  such  an  assumption.  It  is  a  fair  presumption 
that  about  the  same  average  exists  in  the  United  States. 


Per  cent. 

Inoculations,  etc.,  not  involving  any  operation 93.96 

Animals  killed  under  anesthetics 3.44 

Animals  allowed  to  recover  from  anesthetic  but  nothing 
likely  to  cause  pain  and  no  further  operation  allowed 
without  anesthetic ' 2.60 


1(1(1.(10 


In  other  words,  only  twenty-six  animals  o'ut  of  1,000 
could  by  any  possibility  have  suffered  any  pain,  and 
very  few  of  these  any  serious  pain.  Is  this  the 
torture  and  agony  so  constantly  harped  on?2 

Many  of  the  instances  cited  in  antivivisection  litera- 
ture are  taken  from  researches  —  such  as  Magendie's  — 
which  were  made  before  anesthetics  were  discovered, 
over  sixty-live  years  ago. 

The  rest  in  which  real  cruelty  was  inflicted,  and 
which  if  done  now  would  be  condemned  by  all  modern 
research  workers  as  freely  as  by  the  antivivisectionists 
themselves,  were  done  almost  wholly  on  the  Continent, 
and  often  by  persons  who  are  now  dead.  In  discussing 
vivisection  to-day,  these  should  be  excluded,  or  their 
dates  and  countries  indicated,  for  the  public,  ignorant  of 
medical  history,  is  misled  into  supposing  that  these 
persons  are  living  and  practicing  these  methods  to-day 
and  in  America. 

In  one  of  the  anonymous  replies  to  my  paper  on  the 
"Misstatements  of  Antivivisectionists,"  I  am  represented 
as  the  apologist  and  advocate  of  experiments  of  which 
twice  over  at  the  Senate  Committee  hearing  and  again  in 
my  letter  to  Mr.  Brown  I  had  expressed  my  utter  dis- 
approval. I  am  always  willing  to  face  a  truthful  charge, 
but  it  is  a  hopeless  task  to  meet  untruthful  charges, 
especially  when  the  author  is  ashamed  of  his  own  name. 

"Hell  at  Close  Bange"  is  the  title  given  by  Miss  Ellen 
Snow  to  a  leaflet  dealing  with  the  work  of  the  Bockefel- 
ler  Institute.  One  would  scarcely  expect  such  a  fierce 
heat  from  so  frosty  a  name. 

2.  Since  this  address  was  delivered  the  report  of  the  British 
Royal  Commission  on  Vivisection,  on  which  the  antivivisectionists 
were  represented,  has  appeared.  One  of  their  unanimous  con- 
clusions  (page  20)   is  as  follows: 

"U'e  desire  to  state  that  the  harrowing  descriptions  and  illustra- 
tions of  operations  inflicted  on  animals,  which  are  freely  circulated 
by  post,  advertisement  or  otherwise,  are  in  many  cases  calculated  to 
mislead  the  public,  so  far  as  they  suggest  that  the  animals  in  ques- 
tion were  not  under  an  anesthetic.  To  represent  that  animals  sub- 
jected to  experiments  in  this  country  are  wantonly  tortured  would, 
in    our    opinion,    be    absolutely    false." 

This  clear  statement  should  end  this  calumny. 


10 

At  this  institute,  by  experiments  on  twenty-five 
monkeys  and  100  guinea-pigs,  most  of  which  animals 
recovered,  has  been  discovered  a  serum  that  has  brought 
the  former  death-rate  of  cerebrospinal  meningitis  of  75 
or  90  per  cent,  down  to  20  per  cent,  and  less.  Is  it 
because  of  this  beneficent  work  that  it  is  called  "Hell"  ? 

At  this  institute  has  been  discovered  a  means  of 
transfusion '  of  blood  that  has  already  saved  scores  of 
human  lives.     Is  this  the  reason  for  calling  it  "Hell"? 

At  this  institute  a  method  of  criss-crossing  arteries 
and  veins,  which  almost  always  run  alongside  of  each 
other,  has  been  discovered  by  which  impending  gangrene 
has  been  prevented.    Does  this  make  it  a  "Hell"  ? 

At  this  institute  the  cause  and  the  cure  of  infantile 
paralysis  are  being  sought.  Are  such  investigations 
carried  on  in  "Hell"? 

Miss  Snow  in  this  same  leaflet  expresses  in  italics 
her  horror  at  the  idea  of  the  proposition  of  the  institute 
"to  build  a  hospital  where  the  experiments  may  be  con- 
tinued on  human  beings."  It  may  be  of  interest  to  her 
and  also  to  others  to  know  that  this  hospital  was  opened 
in  October,  1910,  and  that  the  public,  undeterred  by  her 
horror,  have  thronged  to  it  in  such  numbers  that  there 
have  not  been  beds  enough  for  the  several  hundreds  of 
disappointed  applicants. 

An  editorial  in  the  Journal  of  Zoophily3  records  a 
gift  to  this  Eockefeller  Institute,  "an  institution  in 
New  York  where  vivisection  should  be  practiced  with 
the  idea  of  achieving  as  great  an  advance  as  possible  in 
the  war  of  science  against  human  suffering,"  and  adds, 
"but  the  gift  only  fanned  into  fury  the  opposition  of 
the  women  to  experiments  on  living  animals,  no  matter 
how  great  the  anticipated  benefit."  Could  cruel  passion 
be  better  expressed  ? 

Can  a  cause  which  so  seriously  injures  the  character 
of  its  advocates  that  they  indulge  in  this  prolific  vocabu- 
lary of  vituperation  by  any  possibility  have  an  uplifting 
influence  ?  It  eminently  fulfils  the  proposed  test  —  it 
"hurts  the  character  and,  therefore,  cannot  be  right." 

Are  those  who  give  loose  rein  to  such  passion  fitted  to 
form  a  sound  and  sane  judgment  on  the  subject  about 
which  they  write?  This  is  especially  true  when  the 
matter  is  one  so  technical  as  anatomic,  physiologic, 
chemical,  pathologic   and  surgical  investigations  as  to 

3.  Jour.  Zoophily,  January,   1909,  p.   2. 


11 

which  they  cannot  be  expected  to  know  and,  in  fact, 
do  not  know  anything.  Even  relatively  few  medical 
men  are  fitted  by  temperament  and  training  to  act  as 
censors  of  such  researches,  much  less  those  ignorant  of 
medicine. 

I  believe  that  much  of  the  passion  shown  in  the  above 
quotations  is  the  result  of  ignorance.  Most  of  the 
attacks  on  vivisection,  as  I  have  said,  assume  or  even 
state  categorically  that  anesthetics  are  not  used.  Saving 
in  the  very  rare  cases  in  which  the  use  of  anesthetics 
would  entirely  frustrate  the  experiment,  anesthetics  are 
always  used.  This  is  done  not  only  for  reasons  of 
humanity,  but  also  because  the  struggles  of  a  suffering 
animal  would  make  delicate  and  difficult  operations 
absolutely  impossible,  to  say  nothing  of  the  danger  of 
injury  to  the  operator. 

The  always-quoted  opinion  of  Professor  Bigelow  was 
founded  on  what  he  had  seen  at  the  Veterinary  School 
at  Alfort,  France,  in  the  preanesthetic  days.  Many 
absolutely  false  statements  are  made  that  anesthetics 
were  not  used  in  certain  specified  experiments,  whereas 
the  experimenters  have  expressly  stated  that  anesthetics 
were  used.  Of  such  misstatements  by  antivivisection 
authors  I  shall  give  some  startling  instances  later.  It 
•is  no  wonder  that  the  public  has  been  thus  misled. 
"Cutting  up  men  and  women  alive"  is  an  accurate 
description  of  every  surgical  operation,  but  we  all  know 
that  while  in  comparatively  few  reports  of  surgical 
operations  it  is  expressly  stated  that  an  anesthetic  was 
used,  such  use  "goes  without  saying." 

One  of  the  most  frequent^  antivivisection  statements 
is  that  "incomplete"  or  "slight"  or  "light"  anesthesia 
means  that  the  animal  is  fully  able  to  feel  pain  and  that 
when  the  eye  resents  a  touch  or  there  is  muscular  move- 
ment following  any  act  which  would  be  painful  when 
one  is  not  anesthetized,  pain  is  actually  being  inflicted. 
Mr.  Coleridge  says  (Question  10,387  in  his  testimony 
before  the  Second  Eoyal  Commission  on  Vivisection), 
"What  does  'anesthetized'  mean?  It  means  'without 
feeling.'  You  cannot  be  slightly  without  feeling.  You 
either  feel  pain  or  you  do  not." 

Very  recently  when  I  had  nitrous  oxid  gas  given 
several  times  to  a  lady  to  bend  a  stiff  elbow  she  struggled 
and  writhed  so  hard  as  almost  to  throw  herself  out  of 
the  dentist's  chair  onto  the  floor.  Yet  she  was  never 
conscious  of  the  slightest  pain.     In  other  words,  while 


12 

the  motor  nervous  centers  responded  to  my  forcible 
bending  movements  and  caused  violent  muscular  strug- 
gles, the  perceptive  nervous  centers  felt  no  pain.  But 
any  spectator  would  surely  have  said  that  she  was  being 
"tortured."  This  is  only  one  of  hundreds  of  similar 
cases  I  have  had;  all  other  surgeons  have  had  similar 
experiences. 

In  modern  laboratory  researches,  ether  or  other 
anesthetics  are  almost  always  given.  Extremely  few 
exceptions  occur,  and  then  only  with  the  consent  of  the 
director  in  each  specific  case.  The  actual  conditions  at 
the  present  day  are  well  shown  by  the  rules  in  force  in 
practically  all  American  laboratories  of  research.  These 
rules  have  been  in  operation  for  over  thirty  years  in 
one  case  and  for  more  than  ten  years  in  others.  In 
most  laboratories  in  which  students  work,  and  where 
they  are  absolutely  under  the  control  of  the  director, 
the  only  animal  used  is  the  frog,  and  by  "pithing"  or 
decapitating  it,  it  is  made  wholly  insensible  to  pain. 

The  idea  that  students  privately  "torture"  animals, 
often,  it  is  stated,  out  of  mere  curiosity,  is  absolutely 
false.  I  have  been  intimately  associated  with  students 
ever  since  1860,  first  as  a  student  and  since  1866  as  a 
teacher.  I  state,  therefore,  what  I  am  in  a  position  to 
know.  Moreover,  private  experimental  research  takes 
time  which  our  overworked  students  do  not  have,  and 
money  which  they  cannot  afford.  It  means  the  rent  of 
a  laboratory,  the  purchase  of  very  expensive  and  delicate 
instruments,  the  rent  of  an  animal  room,  the  cost  of  the 
animals,  and  of  their  food  and  care,  a  man  to  look  after 
them  —  for  all  modern  surgical  work  on  animals  must 
be  done  with  the  same  strict  antiseptic  care  as  on  man 
or  the  experiment  will  surely  fail  and  discredit  the 
author  —  a  total  expense  amounting  to  a  very  large  sum. 

I  quote  in  full  the  rules  which,  as  I  have  said,  are  in 
force  in  practically  all  American  laboratories  of  research: 

RULES    REGARDING    ANIMALS 

1.  Vagrant  dogs  and  cats  brought  to  this  laboratory  and 
purchased  here  shall  be  held  at  least  as  long  as  at  the  city 
pound,  and  shall  be  returned  to  their  owners  if  claimed  and 
identified. 

2.  Animals  in  the  laboratory  shall  receive  every  considera- 
tion for  their  bodily  comfort ;  they  shall  be  kindly  treated, 
properly  fed,  and  their  surroundings  kept  in  the  best  possible 
sanitary  condition. 


13 

3.  Xo  operations  on  animals  shall  be  made  except  with  the 
sanction  of  the  director  of  the  laboratory,  who -holds  himself 
responsible  for  the  importance  of  the  problems  studied  and  for 
the  propriety  of  the  procedures  used  in  the  solution  of  these 
problems. 

4.  In  any  operation  likely  to  cause  greater  discomfort  than 
that  attending  anesthetization,  the  animal  shall  first  be  ren- 
dered incapable  of  perceiving  pain  and  shall  be  maintained  in 
that  condition  until  the  operation  is  ended. 

Exceptions  to  this  rule  will  be  made  by  the  director  alone, 
and  then  only  when  anesthesia  would  defeat  the  object  of  the 
experiment.  In  such  cases  an  anesthetic  shall  be  used  so  far 
as  possible  and  may  be  discontinued  only  so  long  as  is  abso- 
lutely essential  for  the  necessary  observations. 

5.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  experiment  the  animal  shall  be 
killed  painlessly.  Exceptions  to  this  rule  will  be  made  only 
when  continuance  of  the  animal's  life  is  necessary  to  deter- 
mine the  result  of  the  experiment.  In  that  case,  the  same 
aseptic  precautions  shall  be  observed  during  the  operation,  and 
so  far  as  possible  the  same  care  shall  be  taken  to  minimize 
discomforts  during  the  convalescence  as  in  a  hospital  for 
human  beings. 

[Signed]     

Director  of   the  Laboratory. 

I  may  add  that  at  the  Rockefeller  Institute  regular 
trained  nurses  are  employed  and  are  on  duty  not  only 
during  the  day,  but  at  night  when  necessary. 

Self-confessed  total  ignorance  of  a  subject  on  which 
one  gives  extensive  evidence  is  not  often  known,  but 
Dr.  Herbert  Snow  of  London,  an  authority  among  the 
antivivisectionists,  is  a  case  in  point.  Dr.  Snow's  evi- 
dence before  the  Royal  Commission  on  Vivisection 
(1906)  covers  ten  pages  quarto  and  he  answers  326 
questions.  In  1911  Dr.  Snow  visited  America.  In  a 
letter  to  the  Philadelphia  hedged  he  makes  the  almost 
incredible  statement  that  he  gave  all  this  evidence  "in 
utter  ignorance  of  the  vivisection  question." 

Moreover,  when  asked  by  the  Commission  (Question 
2242),  "Do  you  find  any  fault  with  the  present  gentle- 
men who  are  licensed  under  the  act"?  he  replied,  "I  do 
not,"  and  again  (Questions  222?  and  2228)  he  admits 
that  both  painful  and  painless  experiments  may  some- 
times be  necessary. 

In  other  eases  ignorance  of  physiology  and  anatomy 
is  shown  which  would  only  excite  a  smile  did  it  not 

4.   Philadelphia  Ledger,  March  6,  1911. 


14 

gravely  mislead  the  reader.  I  shall  give  only  a  single 
illustration  here.  Others  will  be  found  elsewhere  in 
this  paper. 

"The  Nine  Circles,"  with  its  sulphurous  subtitle, 
"Hell  of  the  Innocent,"  is  an  English  book  originally 
issued  by  the  late  Miss  Frances  Power  Cobbe,  in  1892. 
This  edition  had  to  be  withdrawn  on  account  of  its 
false  statements,  especially  as  to  the  non-use  of  ether.5 
A  second  and  revised  edition  was  issued  in  1893.  This 
was  "carefully  revised  and  enlarged  by  a  subcommittee 
especially  appointed  for  the  purpose,"  as  the  preface 
states. 

On  page  15  of  the  revised  edition,  it  is  correctly 
stated  that  Prof.  Henry  P.  Bowditch  of  the  Harvard 
Medical  School,  in  some  experiments  on  the  circulation, 
etherized  a  cat  and  that  "then  its  sciatic  nerve  was 
divided,  etc."  The  sciatic  nerve  is  the  largest  nerve  in 
the  body  of  man  and  animals  and  passes  down  the  back 
of  the  leg.  After  division  of  the  nerve  the  portion  going 
down  the  leg  below  the  place  where  the  nerve  was 
divided  was  stimulated  by  an  electrical  current.  As  this 
part  of  the  nerve  was  wholly  cut  off  from  the  spinal 
cord  and  brain,  by  no  possibility  could  any  pain  be  felt. 
Yet  a  Boston  lawyer,  in  a  leaflet  published  by  the  New 
England  Antivivisection  Society,  comments  on  a  similar 
experiment  as  follows :  "It  will  be  readily  seen  even 
by  the  casual  reader  that  it  involves  an  amount  of  agony 
beyond  which  science  is  unable  to  go."  Just  how  the 
"casual  reader"  would  be  so  well  informed  as  to  physi- 
ology when  a  lawyer  and  two  doctors — not  casual  but 
intelligent  and  careful  readers  —  got  things  totally 
wrong,  is  not  stated.  Dr.  Bowditch  published  a  correc- 
tion0 of  this  misstatement  in  1896.  In  spite  of  this,  the 
New  England  Antivivisection  Society  in  1909,  thirteen 
years  after  this  public  correction,  was  still  distributing 
this  lawyer's  statement. 

But  in  "The  Nine  Circles"  (second  edition,  carefully 
revised  by  Dr.  Berdoe  and  the  committee)  these  experi- 
ments are  referred  to  as  "experiments  on  the  spinal 
cord"!  (Italics  mine.)  Yet  Bowditch  did  no  operation 
on  the  spinal  cord.  Miss  Cobbe,  not  being  an  anatomist, 
might  be  pardoned  for  confusing  the  thigh  and  the  spine 
of  the  cat,  but  surely  Dr.  Berdoe  ought  to  have  seen  to 

5.  See  pp.  26,   27  and  28  of  this   reprint. 

6.  Bowditch,  Henry  P.  :  Advancement  of  Medicine  by  Research, 
p.  43. 


15 

it  that  "sciatic  nerve"  and  "spinal  cord"  were  not  used 
as  interchangeable  terms. 

Many  years  ago,  after  amputating  a  leg  near  the  hip, 
I  tried  to  see  how  long  electric  stimulation  of  the  sciatic 
nerve  would  cause  the  muscles  of  the  amputated  leg  to 
contract.  After  four  hours,  during  all  of  which  time 
the  muscles  continued  to  react,  I  had  to  stop  as  I  could 
give  no  more  time  to  the  experiment.  According  to  the 
canons  of  antivivisection  as  voiced  above,  I  should  have 
continued  to  etherize  the  patient  whose  leg  had  been 
amputated,  for  he,  just  as  much  as  Bowclitch's  cat,  could 
feel  "agony  beyond  which  science  is  unable  to  go." 

Let  me  give  only  two  other  surprising  statements. 
Dr.  Hadwen7  criticizes  my  reference  in  Harper's  Maga- 
zine8 to  "an  astringent  named  'adrenalin.' ';  I  had 
shown  how  valuable  adrenalin  had  been  in  saving  human 
life  in  certain  surgical  conditions,  and  also  described  the 
resuscitation, .  by  means  of  adrenalin  and  salt  solution, 
of  a  dog  which  had  been  "dead"  for  fifteen  minutes.  Dr. 
Hadwen  concludes  his  paragraph  thus :  "But  it  does 
seem  a  pity  that  these  New  World  vivisectors  will  not  be 
able  to  perform  the  resurrection  miracle  without  first 
killing  somebody  to  get  at  his  kidneys."  The  presum- 
able object  of  "getting  at  his  kidneys"  would  be  in  order 
to  make  adrenalin  from  them.  Now  adrenalin  is  not 
made  from  the  kidneys  at  all,  least  of  all  from  human 
kidneys,  but  from  the  adrenal  glands  of  animals. 

In  the  same  article  he  vaunts  the  use  of  salt  solution 
instead  of  the  direct  transfusion  of  blood,  and  rightk" 
says  that  he  has  "seen  the  most  marvelous  effects  folio > 
the  injection  of  an  ordinary  saline  solution  into  the 
venous  system  in  cases  of  loss  of  blood."  But  he  seems 
to  be  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  this  very  saline  transfusion 
was  begun  and  perfected  by  experiments  on  animals.  I 
commend  to  him  Schwarz's  essay  (Halle,  1881)  with  its- 
twenty-four  experiments  on  rabbits  and  dogs,  and 
Eberius'  essay  (Halle,  1883)  with  its  ten  experiments 
on  rabbits  and  the  record  of  eleven  cases  in  which 
Schwarz's  method  had  already  been  used  in  man.  These 
essays  were  practically  the  beginning  of  our  knowledge 
of  the  advantages  of  the  use  of  salt  solution  over  the 
old  dangerous  methods  of  transfusion  of  blood. 

The  antivivisectionists  deny  the  truths  of  bacteriology. 
Yet  we  practical  physicians,  surgeons  and  obstetricians 

7.  Hadwen :   Jour.  Zoophily,   January,    1910. 

8.  Keen,  W.  W.  :  Harper's  Magazine,  April,  1909. 


16 

Icnow  by  daily  experience  that  Pasteur's  and  Lister's 
researches  are  the  basis  of  most  of  our  modern  progress. 
Are  Hadwen,  Harrigan,  Snow  and  their  colleagues  right 
and  have  all  medical  colleges  all  over  the  world  in  estab- 
lishing chairs  of  bacteriology  and  all  medical  men  in 
believing  bacteriologic  diagnosis  of  such  importance  and 
in  basing  on  the  germ  theory  their  antiseptic  treatment 
which  has  so  revolutionized  modern  surgery  been  wholly 
wrong?  The  germ  theory  is  as  well  established  as  the 
doctrine  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood.9 

II.     FOSTERING  A  SPIRIT   OF   CRUELTY  TO  HUMAN  BEINGS 

My  second  reason  for  believing  that  antivivisection 
injures  character  is  that,  by  putting  a  greater  value  on 
the  well-being  and  the  lives  of  monkeys,  guinea-pigs, 
rabbits,  dogs,  cats,  mice  and  frogs  than  on  the  lives 
of  human  beings,  it  fosters  a  spirit  of  cruelty  to  human 
beings. 

Is  it  not  a  cruel  passion  which  will  lead  men  and 
women  to  write  such  letters  and  to  print  such  epithets 
as  I  have  quoted?  Is  it  a  right  thing  to  misstate  the 
facts  of  operations,  and  after  the  falsity  of  the  charge 
has  been  proved,  still  continue  for  years  to  hold  up  men 
with  human  feelings  and  sensitive  to  abuse  before  the 
community  as  vile  monsters  of  cruelty?  Nay,  more 
than  this,  is  it  not  an  extraordinary  thing  that  those 
who  so  vehemently  denounce  human  vivisection  are  even 
"mong  its  advocates? 

9.  In  Mrs.  White's  answer  to  this  address  (Boston  Med.  and  Surg. 
Jour.,  July  25,  1912,  p.  143),  as  the  editor  on  page  131  points  out, 
her  reference  to  the  "fever  inseparable  from  the  healing  of  abdominal 
wounds"  shows  ignorance  of  the  results  of  modern  progress  in  sur- 
gery. Thanks  to  bacteriology  and  the  antiseptic  method  of  Lister 
and  his  followers,  thousands  of  surgeons  and  patients  the  world 
over  can  confirm  my  own  experience,  both  as  a  surgeon  and  as  a 
patient,  that  no  fever  usually  follows  a  clean  abdominal  operation. 
Before  Lister's  day,  not  only  was  there  the  terrible  fever  and  suf- 
fering of  peritonitis,  but  the  mortality  was  so  great  that  we  never 
dared  to  do  many  operations  which  are  now  commonplace  and 
rarely  fatal.  Another  illustration  of  ignorance  of  surgery  is  found 
in  Mrs.  White's  reference  (p.  143;  in  the  same  paragraph  to  the 
"pain  caused  by  the  presence  of  gall-stones  in  the  gall-bladder,"  a 
pain  which  she  says  "is  generally  considered  the  most  violent  pain 
known."  Now.  it  is  true  that  sometimes  "gall-stones  in  the  gall- 
bladder" do  cause  some  or  even  considerable  pain  ;  but  many  post- 
mortem examinations  reveal  "gall-stones  in  the  gall-bladder"  which 
have  never  given  the  patient  the  slightest  pain,  and  the  patient, 
therefore,  was  totally  ignorant  of  their  presence.  The  "violent 
pain"  to  which  she  refers  is  due  not  to  their  presence  in  the  gall- 
bladder, but  to  the  terrible  "gall-stone  colic"  caused  by  the  passage 
of  the  gall-stones  out  of  the  gall-bladder  into  its  duct,  or  tube, 
opening  into  the  bowel.  Modern  antiseptic  surgery  prevents  these 
constantly  recurring  attacks  by  safely  removing  the  gall-stones  from 
the  gall-bladder  or  from  the  gall-duct. 


17 

When  I  was  professor  of  surgery  in  the  Woman's 
Medical  College  of  Pennsylvania  I  took  as  the  topic  of 
'my  address  at  one  of  the  commencements,  "Our  Eecent 
Debts  to  Vivisection."  Mrs.  Caroline  Earle  White  pub- 
lished "An  Answer  to  Dr.  Keen's  Address  Entitled, 
"Our  Eecent  Debts  to  Vivisection/'  At  the  bottom  of 
page  4  I  find  the  following:  "I  take  issue  with  Dr. 
Keen  in  the  second  place  where  he  says,  'These  experi- 
ments cannot,  nay,  must  not,  be  tested  first  upon  man.' 
I  assert,  on  the  contrary,  that  in  the  majority  of  cases 
they  must  be  tested  first  upon  man  [italics  my  own]  or 
not  tested  at  all,  because  no  important  deductions  can 
ever  be  drawn  with  any  degree  of  certainty  from  experi- 
ments upon  animals,  since  in  some,  inexplicable  way  their 
construction  is  so  different  from  that  of  man." 

The  statements  in  the  latter  portion  of  the  concluding 
sentence  will  much  amuse  anatomists,  physiologists  and 
biologists,  or,  in  fact,  any  one  who  reallv  knows  anything 
about  science.  With  minor  modifications,  man  and  the 
lower  animals  are  alike  in  almost  all  particulars,  both 
in  structure  and  function,  in  health  and  disease. 

The  extraordinary  fact  is  that  Mrs.  White  asserts 
that  experiments  must  be  tested  first  on  men  or  not 
tested  at  all.  That  is  to  say,  we  must  either  experiment 
on  human  beings  or  else  continue  in  exactly  the  same 
old  rut  as  before  and  never  make  any  progress,  for  every 
departure  from  prior  practice,  however  slight,  is  an 
"experiment." 

If  this  basic  doctrine  of  antivivisection  had  held  good 
for  the  last  fifty  years  "Lister  would  not  have  been  able, 
after  carefully  testing  his  antiseptic  method  on  animals 
and  having  found  it  successful,  then,  and  not  before 
then,  to  try  it  on  man.10  By  this  means  he  became,  as 
the  British  Medical  Journal  has  just  called  him,  "the 
maker  of  modern  surgery." 

On  page  10  of  Mrs.  White's  "Answer"  is  found  the 
following  flat-footed  advocacy  of  human  vivisection: 
"Dr.  Keen  mentions  that  in  India  alone  20,000  human 
beings  die  annually  from  snake-bites  and  as  yet  no 
antidote  has  been  discovered.  How  can  we  search 
intelligently  for  an  antidote,  he  says,  until  we  know 
accurately  the  effects  of  the  poison?  I  should  reply 
that  in  order  to  find  out  the  effects  of  the  poison  and  to 

10.  Keen,  W.  W.  :  Modern  Antiseptic  Surgery  and  the  Role  of 
Experiment  in  Its  Discovery  and  Development,  Jour.  Am.  Med. 
Assn.,  April  2.  lSlO,  p.  1104.  Reprinted  in  this  series  of  pamphlets 
on  Defense  of  Research.     See  Xo.  XII,  page  2    of  the  cover. 


18 

search  also  for  an  antidote,  the  best  plan  would  be  for 
the  experimenters  to  go  to  India  where  they  could  find 
as  large  a  field  for  investigation  as  they  require  in  the 
poor  victims  themselves.  Here  is  an  opportunity  such 
as  is  not  often  offered  for  experimenting  upon  human 
beings,11  since  as  they  would  invariably  die  from  the 
snake-bites,  there  can  be  no  objection  to  trying  upon  them 
every  variety  of  antidote  that  can  be  discovered.  Nothing 
seems  to  me  less  defensible  than  these  experiments  on 
the  poison  of  snake  bites  upon  animals  since  it  is  the  one 
case  in  which  they  could  be  observed  with  so  much 
satisfaction  and  certainty  upon  man!"   (Italics  my  own.) 

Such  a  proposal  is  as  absurd  as  it  is  cruel.  Even  if 
the  experimenter  could  afford  sufficient  time  and  money 
to  go  to  India  for  months  or  rather  for  years,  how 
could  he  arrange  to  be  present  when  such  unexpected 
accidents  occurred?  How  could  he  have  at  hand  in  the 
jungle  the  ether,  chemicals,  assistants,  tables,  tents, 
food  and  drink,  and  the  necessary  yet  intricate  and 
delicate  instruments?  And  even  if  he  had  all  of  these, 
how  could  he  work  with  the  calmness  and  the  orderly 
deliberation  of  the  laboratory  when  a  fellow  human 
being's  life  was  ebbing  away  and  every  minute  counted 
in  such  a  swift  poison?  The  proposal  is  cruel  and 
revolting  and  would  never  be  accepted  by  any 
investigator. 

But  Mrs.  White  is  not  the  only  one  who  is  guilty  of 
making  such  a  proposal.  Many  antivivisection  leaflets 
and  pamphlets  express  the  wish  that  the  vivisectors 
should  be  vivisected.  In  a  pamphlet12  freely  distributed 
in  the  United  States  I  find  the  following  in  a  letter 
from  a  man  at  that  time  a  Senator  of  the  United  States : 
"It  would  be  much  better  to  dissect  men  alive  occasion- 
ally for  the  general  welfare  because  the  attendant 
phenomena  and  demonstration  of  the  victims  being  of 
our  own  particular  form  of  animal  would  be  far  more 

11.  In  her  answer  to  this  address  (Boston  Med.  and  Surg-.  Jour., 
July  25,  1912,  p.  143),  Mrs.  White,  after  ample  time  for  reflection, 
defends  her  proposal  for  "experimenting-  on  human  beings,"  saying 
that  "it  does  not  seem  to  me  that  this  is  a  cruel  suggestion,  as  my 
only  object  in  it  was  to  benefit  the  poor  natives  who  die  by  the 
thousand  every  year."  Such  a  defense  places  her  clearly  and  defi- 
niteJy  among  the  advocates  of  vivisection,  whose  "only  object"  is 
to  prevent  death  "by  thousands  every  year."  This  object,  more- 
over, has  already  been  obtained  in  a  score  of  diseases  and  will  be 
obtained  hereafter  in  many  others,  not,  however,  by  "experimenting 
on  human  beings,"  as  she  advocates,  but  on  dogs,  cats,  rabbits, 
guinea-pigs,  mice,  frogs,  etc. 

12.  Cobbe,  Frances  Power,  and  Bryan,  Benjamin  :  Vivisection  in 
America,  p.  15. 


19 

valuable  than  the  result  of  our  observation  upon  the 
physical  structure  illustrated  in  the  agonies  unto  death 
of  the  helpless  creatures  around  us."  The  English  is  as 
distressing  as  the  proposal  is  astounding. 

Let  me  give  one  more  illustration  of  the  effect  of  anti- 
vivisection  in  encouraging  cruelty. 

To-day  the  plague,  cholera  and  yellow  fever  no  longer 
terrify  Europe  or  America.  What  is  the  reason  for  this  ? 
Primarily  and  chiefly  the  discovery  of  the  germs  of 
cholera  and  of  the  plague  by  bacteriologic  methods, 
which  in  turn  are  very  largely  the  result  of  experiment 
on  animals,  and  of  the  means  of  the  transmission  of 
yellow  fever,  though  as  yet  not  of  its  cause.  In  the 
latter  case  experiments  on  animals  were  out  of  the 
question  because  it  is  impossible  to  transmit  yellow  fever 
to  animals.  They  are  not  susceptible  to  the  poison.  So 
a  number  of  noble  medical  men  and  others  volunteered 
to  have  experiments  tried  on  them.  The  very  first 
experiments  were  tried  on  medical  men.  These  men 
slept  in  a  stifling  atmosphere  for  twenty  nights  in  the 
beds  in  which  yellow  fever  patients  had  died,  and  in 
their  very  clothes,  clothes  soiled  with  their  black  vomit, 
urine  and  feces ;  tried  to  inoculate  themselves  by  putting 
some  of  the  black  vomit  into  their  eyes,  or  by  hypodermic 
injections,  etc.,  but  all  in  vain.  By  none  of  these 
methods  were  they  able  to  inoculate  themselves  with  the 
fever.  One  step  more  was  requisite  —  to  learn  whether 
a  well  man  bitten  by  an  infected  niosquito,  but  having 
been  exposed  to  no  other  possible  source  of  infection, 
would  contract  the  disease.  Dr.  Carroll  of  the  Army 
was  the  first  to  offer  himself,  and  nearly  lost  his  life. 
Others  followed.  Several  lost  their  lives,  among  them 
Dr.  Lazear,  at  the  beginning  of  a  most  promising  career. 
His  tablet  in  the  Johns  Hopkins  Hospital,  in  the  fine 
words  written  by  President  Eliot  records  that  "with 
more  than  the  courage  and  the  devotion  of  the  soldier, 
he  risked  and  lost  his  life  to  show  how  a  fearful  pesti- 
lence is  communicated  and  how  its  ravages  may  be 
prevented." 

Contrast  with  this  a  cruel  letter13  written  by  a  woman : 
"Science  is  based  on  such  firm  foundation,  indeed,  that 
it  can  at  a  moment's  notice  be  tumbled  down  and 
become  a  wrecked  mass  by  a  mosquito !  Xot  only  this, 
but  these  life-long  vivisectors  could  not  even  prolong 

13.  New  York  Herald,  Aug.  2,  1909. 


20 

their  own  lives.  Undone  by  a  mosquito !  I  shall  always 
have  unbounded  admiration-  for  that  clever  insect." 
(Italics  mine.) 

This  self-sacrifice  for  humanity  has  made  us  masters 
the  world  over  of  yellow  fever,  has  made  possible  the 
Panama  Canal,  has  saved  many  thousands  of  human 
lives  and  millions  of  dollars  in  our  own  Southern  states 
alone,  and  yet  a  woman  can  feel  "unbounded  admiration 
for  the  clever  insect"  which  slew  these  heroes  and  had 
devastated  cities  and  countries  for  centuries !  Does  not 
such  antivivisection  zeal  "hurt  character"? 

Two  men  are  especially  obnoxious  to  the  antivivisec- 
tionist :  Pasteur,  whose  demonstration  of  the  cause  of 
that  form  of  infection  known  as  puerperal  or  childbed 
fever  alone  would  have  made  his  name  immortal;  and 
Lister,  whose  application  and  extension  of  the  principles 
laid  down  by  Pasteur  have  revolutionized  all  modern 
surgery. 

I  need  not  argue  the  case  for  Pasteur,  Lister  and 
modern  antiseptic  surgery.  Excepting  the  antivivisec- 
tionists,  every  intelligent  man  and  woman  the  world  over 
knoivs  that  modern  surgery  has  been  made  safe  by  their 
researches.     Let  me  give  a  single  instance. 

In  the  charming  "Life  of  Pasteur"  by  Rene  Vallery- 
Radot,  it  is  stated14  that,  hoping  to  overcome  the  almost 
invariably  fatal  results  of  ovariotomy  in  the  hospitals, 
the  authorities  of  Paris  "hired  an  isolated  house  in  the 
Avenue  de  Meudon,  a  salubrious  spot  near  Paris.  In 
1863  ten  women  in  succession  were  sent  to  that  house. 
The  neighbors  watched  those  ten  patients  entering  the 
house,  and  a  short  time  afterward  their  ten  coffins  being 
taken  away !"  When  I  was  the  assistant  to  the  late 
Dr.  Washington  L.  Atlee  in  the  late  60's,  two  patients 
out  of  three  on  whom  he,  the  foremost  ovariotomist  in 
America,  operated  died. 

To-da3r,  thanks  to  Pasteur  and  Lister  and  modern 
surgery,  based  on  experiment  on  animals  more  than  on 
any  other  foundation,  not  more  than  two  or  three  in  a 
hundred  die  after  ovariotomy.  Yet,  if  the  antivivisec- 
tionists  had  prevailed,  tbe  horrible  mortality  of  the 
earlier  days  and  even  the  tragedy  of  the  ten  women  and 
the  ten  coffins  would  still  exist.    Is  not  this  cruelty? 

Let  me  take  another  illustration  of  a  similar  cruelty, 
a    form    especially    interesting    to    women.      Prof.    J. 

14.  Vallery-Radot :  Life  of  Pasteur,  ii,  16. 


21 

Whitridge  Williams,15  professor  of  obstetrics  in  the 
Johns  Hopkins  University,  states  the  following  facts: 
In  1866  Lefort  showed"  that  in  888,312  obstetric  cases 
in  the  hospitals  of  France  up  to  1864,  30,394  women 
had  died  of  puerperal  fever;  that  is  to  say,  3.5  per  cent., 
or  about  every  twenty-seventh  mother.  From  1860  to 
1864  the  mortality  in  the  Maternite  of  Paris  had  risen 
nearly  fourfold,  to  12.4  per  cent.  In  December,  1864, 
it  rose  to  57  per  cent. ;  that  is  to  say,  more  than,  one-half 
of  the  women  who  bore  children  in  that  hospital  in  that 
month  died  of  childbed  fever !  In  Prussia  alone,  in  the 
sixty  years  from  1815  to  1875,  Boehr  showed  that 
363,624  women  had  died  of  the  same  fever  and  estimated 
that  every  thirtieth  prospective  mother  was  doomed  to 
death  from  that  cause.  In  the  United  States,  Hodge, 
of  Philadelphia,  showed  that  in  the  Pennsylvania  Hos- 
pital from  1803  to  1833  there  had  been  a  mortality  of 
5.6  per  cent. ;  i.  e.,  every  eighteenth  mother  was  doomed. 
Lusk  reported  an  epidemic  in  1872  with  18  per  cent.; 
that  is,  almost  every  fifth  mother  perished  from  the 
same  fever ! 

As  late  as  March,  1879,  only  thirty-three  years  ago, 
at  the  Paris  Academy  of  Medicine,  when  the  leading 
men  in  a  debate  on  childbed  fever  were  at  a  loss  to 
account  for  it,  Pasteur  drew  on  the  blackboard  what 
we  now  know  as  the  streptococcus  and  declared  this  little 
vegetable  organism  to  be  its  cause.  Our  own  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes  in  1843  was  the  first  who  declared  on 
clinical  grounds  that  the  doctors  and  the  nurses  carried 
.the  contamination,  but  how  and  why  he  could  not  know, 
for  bacteriology  did  not  then  exist.  •  He  was  followed 
by  Semmelweis,  of  Vienna,  who  in  1861  still  further 
reinforced  the  reasoning  of  Holmes,  and  for  his  pains 
was  tabooed  by  his  professional  colleagues  and  ended  his 
life  in  a  madhouse. 

The  result  of  Pasteur's  researches  and  the  practical 
application  of  Lister's  antiseptic  method  to  obstetrics  as 
well  as  to  surgery  have  borne  the  most  astounding  and 
gratifying  fruit.  For  instance,  in  1909  Markoe  reported 
in  the  New  York  Lying-in  Hospital  in  60,000  births  a 
maternal  mortality  of  only  0.34  per  cent.,  and  Pinard 
in  1909  in  45,633  births  recorded  a  mortality  of  only 
0.15  per  cent.,  while  in  1907  Mermann  had  been  able 

15.  Williams,  J.  Whitridge  :  Obstetrics  and  Animal  Experimenta- 
tion, Jour.  Am.  Med.  Assn.,  April  22,  1911,  p.  1159,  and  this  series 
of  pamphlets  No.  XVIII. 


22 

to  report  a  mortality  of  only  0.08  per  cent,  in  8,700 
patients !  In  other  words,  these  reports  show  in  round 
numbers  that,  taking  in  the  two  extremes,  the  deaths 
from  childbed  fever  fell  from  the  extraordinary  rate 
of  fifty-seven  in  a  hundred  mothers,  or  the  former  usual 
rate  of  five  or  six  in  every  hundred  mothers,  to  one 
mother  in  1,250. 

If  for  fifty  years  past  the  antivivisectionists  had  had 
their  way,  all  these  marvelous  results  in  obstetrics  would 
have  been  prevented  and  women  would  still  be  dying 
by  the  hundred  and  the  thousand  from  puerperal  fever 

—  an  entirely  preventable  disease.  Would  it  not  have 
been  the  height  of  cruelty  to  stop  these  experiments? 
But  according  to  the  Journal  of  Zodphity  such  wonder- 
ful life-saving  exjDeriments  should  be  prohibited,  "no 
matter  how  great  the  anticipates  benefit." 

In  surgery,  erysipelas,  blood-poisoning,  lockjaw,  hos- 
pital gangrene,  etc.,  would  still  be  killing  our  patients 
right  and  left;  weeks  of  suffering,  to  say  nothing  of 
danger,  would  confront  every  patient  operated  on;  the 
modern  surgery  of  the '  head,  of  every  organ  in  the 
abdomen  and  pelvis,  of  tumors  and  of  cancer,  amputa- 
tions and  many  other  operations,  instead  of  being  almost 
painless  and  so  safe  as  they  are  to-day,  would  be  the 
cause  of  prolonged  illness,  pain  and  death ;  in  fact,  most 
of  them  would  be  deemed  entirely  impossible  of  perform- 
ance —  they  were  impossible  before  Pasteur  and  Lister 

—  and  animals  themselves  would  still  be  suffering  as 
of  old  from  animal  maladies  whose  causes  are  now 
known  and  whose  ravages  have  been  enormously, 
diminished. 

Call  you  not  the  desire  to  arrest  such  experiments 
cruelty  to  man  and  animals  alike? 

In  a  speech  in  the  House  of  Commons,  April  i,  1883, 
Sir  Lyon  Play  fair,  the  Deputy  Speaker,  said : 

For  myself,  though  formerly  a  professor  of  chemistry  in  the 
greatest  medical  school  of  this  country  [Edinburgh],  I  am 
responsible  only  for  the  death  of  two  rabbits  by  poison,  and  I 
ask  the  attention  of  the  House  to  the  case  as  a  strong  justifi- 
cation for  experiments  on  animals;  and  yet  I  should  have  been 
treated  as  a  criminal  under  the  present  act  [the  British  vivi- 
section law]  had  it  then  existed. 

Sir  James  Simpson,  who  introduced  chloroform,  .  .  . 
was  then  alive  and  in  constant  quest  of  new  anesthetics.  He 
came  to  my  laboratory  one  day  to  see  if  I  had  any  new  sub- 
stances   likely    to    suit    his    purpose.     I    showed    him    a    liquid 


23 

which  had  just  been  discovered  by  one  of  ray  assistants,  and 
Sir  James,  who  was  bold  to  rashness  in  experimenting  on  him- 
self, desired  immediately  to  inhale  it  in  my  private  room.  I 
refused  to  give  him  any  of  the  liquid  unless  it  was  first  tried 
on  rabbits.  Two  rabbits  were  accordingly  made  to  inhale  it; 
they  quickly  passed  into  anesthesia  and  apparently  as  quickly 
recovered,  but  from  an  after-action  of  the  jioison  they  both  died 
a  few  hours  afterward.  Now  was  this  not  a  justifiable  experi- 
ment on  animals?  Was  not  the  sacrifice  of  two  rabbits  worth 
saving  the  life  of  the  most  distinguished  physician  of  his 
time  ? 

As  this  experiment  was  not  for  the  good  of  the  two 
rabbits,  but  in  fact,  killed  them,  in  the  eye  of  present- 
day  antivivisectionists  it  would  be  wrong,  and,  if  they 
had  their  way,  illegal  and  punishable,  and  Simpson 
would  have  lost  his  life.    Would  not  this  be  cruelty? 

Let  me  state  briefly  two  of  the  most  recent  discoveries 
in  medicine  and  surgery : 

1.  Vaccination  against  typhoid  fever.  Starting  from 
Pasteur's  researches  on  animal  diseases  and  continued 
by  various  observers  and  especially  in  the  last  few  years 
by  Sir  Almroth  Wright,  of  London,  there  has  been 
developed  chiefly  by  experiments  on  animals  a  "vaccine" 
to  prevent  typhoid  fever.  When  by  such  experiments 
the  method  was  found  to  be  sufficiently  safe,  it  was 
tried  on  man.' 

In  the  Boer  War,  and  among  the  German  troops  in 
their  African  colonies,  tentative  trials  of  its  value  were 
made.  Now  it  has  been  tried  in  the  United  States 
Army  on  a  larger  scale  and  with  more  astonishingly 
good  results  than  in  any  previous  trials. 

During  the  Spanish  War  there  were  20,738  cases  of 
typhoid  and  1,580  deaths;  nearly  one-fifth  of  the  entire 
army  had  the  disease.  It  caused  over  86  per  cent,  of  the 
entire  mortality  of  that  war !  In  some  regiments  as 
many  as  400  men  out  of  1,300  fell  ill  with  it.  How  this 
would  handicap  an  army  in  the  field  —  to  say  nothing 
of  deaths  —  is  evident. 

Lately  in  our  army  on  the  Mexican  border,  for  months 
under  war  conditions,  except  as  to  actual  hostilities, 
there  has  not  oeen  a  single  soldier  ill  with  typhoid: 
This  is  due  partly  to  better  sanitation  (which  in  turn  is 
due  largely  to  bacteriology)  but  chiefly  by  reason  of 
wholesale  antityphoid  vaccination.  This  is  evident  from 
the  fact  that  during  the  year  June  30,  1908,  to  1909, 
when  this   vaccination   was   purely   voluntary   and  the 


army  was  not  in  the  field,  proportionately  sixteen  times 
as  many  unvaccinated  soldiers  fell  ill  with  the  disease 
as  compared  with  the  vaccinated.  On  the  Mexican  border 
there  has  been  only  one  single  case  of  typhoid,  not  in  a 
soldier,  but  a  teamster  who  had  not  been  vaccinated.  So 
evident  are  the  benefits  of  this  preventive  inoculation 
that  Dr.  Neff,  the  director  of  health  of  Philadelphia,  has 
issued  a  circular  proposing  its  municipal  use,  and  also 
to  prevent  typhoid  in  our  summer  resorts.  In  many 
large  hospitals  it  is  extensively  used  to  protect  the 
physicians  and  nurses  from  catching  the  fever. 

Would  it  not  have  been  cruel  to  prevent  such  life- 
saving  experiments? 

2.  In  surgery  let  me  instance  the  surgery  of  the  chest. 
This  has  been  the  region  in  which  progress  has  lagged 
far  behind  that  of  all  the  other  parts  of  the  body  till 
within  the  last  five  or  six  years.  The  reason  was  that 
the  moment  you  opened  the  chest  cavity  to  get  at  the 
heart,  the  lungs,  the  esophagus,  the  aorta  or  the  pleura, 
it  was  like  making  an  opening  in  the  side  of  a  bellows. 
The  air,  instead  of  being  drawn  in  and  forced  out 
through  the  nozzle  (corresponding  to  the  mouth  in  the 
case  of  a  patient),  passed  in  and  out  through  the  opening 
in  the  side  of  the  bellows  or  the  chest.  If  only  one  side 
was  opened,  breathing  was  embarrassed,  if  both  sides 
were  opened  the  patient's  lungs  collapsed,  breathing  was 
impossible  and  death  ensued. 

Sauerbruch,  then  of  Breslau,  first  devised  a  large  air- 
tight box  or  chamber  in  which  the  pressure  of  the  air 
could  be  increased  or  diminished  at  will.  The  body  of 
the  patient,  the  surgeons,  nurses  and  instruments  were 
all  inside  the  box,  and  a  telephone  enabled  them  to  give 
directions  to  those  outside,  especially  to  the  etherizer. 
The  head  of  the  patient  with  an  air-tight  collar  around 
his  neck  protruded  outside  of  the  chamber  where  the 
etherizer  also  was  placed.  In  such  a  chamber  the  chest 
could  be  safely  opened.  But  while  this  was  an  immense 
improvement,  such  a  chamber  is  clumsy,  not  easily 
transportable,  and  is  very  expensive.  The  method  has 
done  good  service,  however.  It  has  been  improved  by 
others  and  is  in  use  to-day  by  many  surgeons. 

At  the  Bockefeller  Institute,  Meltzer  and  Auer,  by  a 
number  of  experiments  on  animals,  have  lately  developed 
a  new,  simple  and  safe  method  of  anesthesia  with  ether 
which  is  revolutionizing  the  surgery  of  the  chest  and  to 
a  considerable  extent  may  even  displace  the   ordinary 


25 

inhalation  method  of  anesthesia.  As  soon  as  the  patient 
has  been  etherized  in  the  ordinary  way,  a  rubber  tube  is 
inserted  into  the  windpipe  through  the  mouth.  By  a 
foot  bellows  ether-laden  air  is  pumped  into  the  lungs 
through  this  tube,  the  foul  breath  escaping  between  the 
tube  and  the  windpipe  and  out  through  the  mouth. 
Experiments  on  animals  showed  that  the  rubber  tube 
used  for  so  long  a  time  would  not  injure  the  vocal  chords 
and  so  alter  or  destroy  the  voice  of  a  patient,  or  cause 
injury  to  the  lungs,  and  that  the  method  was  most 
efficacious  in  the  surgery  of  the  chest. 

I  saw  Carrel  thus  keep  a  dog  under  ether  for  about  an 
hour  and  a  half;  open  both  sides  of  the  chest  by  one 
wide  sweep  of  the  knife,  displace  the  heart  and  lungs 
this  way  or  that;  expose  and  divide  the  aorta  between 
two  clamps  (to  prevent  immediate  fatal  hemorrhage)  ; 
do  a  tedious  and  difficult  operation  on  the  aorta;  unite 
its  two  cut  ends;  replace  the  heart  and  lungs,  and  close 
the  wound.  An  hour  later  the  dog,  which  showed  no 
evidences  of  suffering,  was  breathing  naturally,  and  in 
time  recovered  entirely.*  What  this  method  means  in 
injuries  and  diseases  of  the  heart,  in  gangrene,  abscess 
and  tumors  of  the  lungs,  in  cancer  of  the  esophagus,  and 
foreign  bodies  lodged  in  the  esophagus  or  in  the  bronchial 
tubes,  and  in  diseases  of  the  aorta,  one  can  hardly  yet 
even  imagine. 

These  experiments  have  done  more  for  the  surgery  of 
the  chest  in  three  or  four  years  than  all  the  "clinical 
observation"  of  cases  in  a  thousand  years.  The  method 
has  already  been  tried  successfully  in  several  hundreds 
of  cases  in  man,  and  the  future  has  in  store  for  us  a 
new  and  most  beneficent  chapter  in  the  surgery  of  the 
chest. 

Yet  if  the  antivivisectionists  had  prevailed  all  these 
experiments  would  have  been  prevented,  the  doors  of 
the  Eockefeller  Institute  nailed  up,  and  men,  women 
and  children  have  been  deprived  of  the  benefits  of  these 
splendid  discoveries.     Call  you  not  that  intensely  cruel  ? 

Moreover,  these  very  same  people  in  their  own  house- 
holds and  without  the  slightest  pity  will  kill  rats  and 
mice  by  turning  them  over  to  the  tender  mercies  of  cats, 
by  drowning  them,  by  strangling  them  in  traps,  by 
poisoning  them  with   strychnin   or  phosphorus,   or  by 

*  For  these  and  other  experimental  researches  Carrel  has  just 
been  awarded  the  Nobel  Prize  in  medicine — a  splendid  testimony  to 
his  genius — from  the  first  scientists  of  the  world. 


26 

any  other  means  of  "torture";  but  they  hold  up  their 
hands  in  holy  horror  when  any  proposal  is  made  to 
terminate  the  lives  of  other  rats  and  mice  almost  always 
without  pain  and  with  immense  benefit  to  humanity. 
They  are  cruel  and  callous  to  human  suffering  so  long 
as  dogs  and  cats,  mice  and  guinea-pigs  escape  !  And  yet, 
as  I  have  shown,  only  twenty-six  animals  in  a  thousand 
can  possibly  ever  suffer  at  all ! 

That  sentiment  rather  than  principle  is  at  the  bottom 
of  the  antivivisection  crusade  is  shown  by  what  I  in 
common  with  many  others  believe  to  be  true,  that  if 
experimental  research  could  be  carried  on  in  other 
animals  without  using  clogs  and  cats  there  would  scarcely 
have  been  any  antivivisection  movement. 

III.     DIMINISHING    OF    REVERENCE   FOR   ACCURACY 

The  third  way  in  which  the  influence  of  antivivisection 
injures  character  is  by  diminishing  the  reverence  for 
accuracy.  In  1901 1  gave  many  instances16  of  the  misstate- 
ments of  the  antivivisectionists.  These  misstatements 
were  contained  in  two  anonymous  pamphlets,  and  I  have 
two  more  similar  publications  which  are  also  anonymous. 
1  have  before  me  also  three  publications  purporting  to  be 
replies  to  that  publication  of  mine,  all  again  anonymous. 
Is  a  foe  who  attacks  from  ambush  worthy  of  the  respect 
and  confidence  of  the  public  ? 

These  misstatements,  so  far  as  I  know,  are  still  dis- 
tributed in  leaflets  and  pamphlets  without  correction 
nearly  eleven  years  after  their  incorrectness  was  shown. 
In  fact,  several  of  them  reappear  uncorrected  in  the 
Journal  of  Zoophily  for  Julv,  1911. 

Let  me  give  a  few  new  instances. 

The  most  prominent  antivivisectiOnist  in  England  is 
Mr.  Stephen  Coleridge.  On  page  183  (April  to  July, 
190?)  in  the  minutes  of  his  evidence  before  the  Eoyal 
Commission  on  Vivisection,  I  find  the  following: 

Question  10952:  We  may  have  inspection,  but  still  we  may 
ask  a  person  of  character  when  he  saw  the  experiment  what, 
his  opinion  of  it  was.     Will  you  not  accept  that  ? 

Answer:  Certainly  not,  because  I  think  that  all  these  experi- 
menters have  the  greatest  contempt  for  the  act  of  Parliament. 
They  would  deny  a  breach  of  this  act  just  as  I  should  deny 
a   breach   of    the    motor   car   act.      I    drive   a   motor    car   and 

16.  Keen,  W.  W.  :  Misstatements  on  Antivivisection,  Jour.  Am. 
Med.  Assn.,   Feb.  23,   1901,   p.   500. 


when  I  go  beyond  the  speed  limit  and  the  policeman  asks  me 
I  say,  %Xo,  I  am  not  going  beyond  the  speed  limit,11  [italics  mine]. 
Nothing  would  keep  me  from  going  beyond  the  speed  limit 
except  the  presence  of  a  policeman  in  the  car;  and  nothing 
will  keep  the  experimenter  within  the  four  corners  of  the  act 
except  an  inspector  in  the  laboratory. 

Question  10953:  Surely,  if  you  were  asked  about  the  speed 
limit  and  gave  your  word  that  you  had  not  exceeded  it,  you 
would  not  expect  to  be  disbelieved  ? 

Answer :  No,  I  did  not  say  so.  I  said  last  year  that  of 
course  I  did,  and  I  exceed  it  every  time. 

Question  10954:  You  (ire  apparently  not  very  ethical  about 
motor  cars  [italics  mine].  If  you  apply  your  principles  as 
regards  motoring  to  the  physiologists,  you  have  very  little 
to  say  against  them  ? 

Answer :  What  I  have  to  say  is  that  they  regard  the  vivisec- 
tion act  of  1876  with  the  same  contempt  that  I  regard  the 
motor  car  act  as  regards  the  speed  limit. 

In  quoting  also  a  letter  from  the  Home  Office  Mr. 
Coleridge  admits  mutilating  it,  for  in  reply  to  Question 
11015,  he  says,  "I  seem  to  have  left  out  the  important 
item  of  it."'  See  also  Questions  10301,  11011,  11021 
and  19967  to  19973. 

Comment  on  Mr.  Coleridge's  testimony  is  superfluous. 

Again  in  the  "Black  Art  of  Vivisection,"  Mr.  Cole- 
ridge states,  "The  Pasteur  institutes  in  Paris  and  else- 
where have  entirely  failed  to  prevent  people  dying  of 
hydrophobia."  Yet  the  fact  is  that  formerly  from  12 
to  14  per  cent,  of  persons  bitten  developed  the  disease 
and  every  one  of  them  died,  whereas  the  result  of  the 
Pasteur  treatment  in  55,000.  cases  has  diminished  the 
mortality  to  0.77  per  cent,  of  those  bitten. 

I  cite  another  English  instance.  In  "The  Xine  Cir- 
cles,"18 is  published  a  reply  to  a  letter  by  Sir  Victor 
(then  Mr.)  Horsley,  published  in  the  London  Times, 
Oct.  25,  1892,  a  copy  of  which  T  have  before  me.  The 
book,  as  the  London  Times  points  out  in  an  editorial, 
was 

17.  In  a  letter  referring  to  this  address  (Boston  Med.  and  Surg. 
Jour.,  July  11,  1912.  p.  71),  Mr.  Coleridge  says  that  I  seem  "quite 
shocked  that  he  should  admit  that  he  constantly  breaks  the  law 
and  exceeds  the  speed  limit  of  20  miles  an  hour  in  his  motor  car." 
and  that  "a  quarter  of  a  million  motorists"  do  the  same.  If  the 
reader  will  again  peruse  Mr.  Coleridge*s  testimony,  as  quoted  in  the 
text,  he  will  find  that  there  are  two  admissions:  (1)  that  he  con- 
stantly breaks  the  law.  i.  e..  the  "statute  law"  of  England  as  to 
the  speed  limit;  and  (2)  that  when  he  goes  beyond  the  speed  limit, 
and  the  policeman  asks  him  he  says,  "No,  I  am  not  going  beyond  the 
speed  limit."  The  last  statement  is  what  gives  special  point  to  the 
quotation  from  his  evidence,  but  in  his  letter  he  omits  any  reference 
to  this  more  important  admission. 

18.  Second  Edition,   pp.   23-28. 


28 

Compiled  under  his  [Dr.  Berdoe's]  direction.  He  was 
entrusted  with  the  task  of  reading  the  proofs  and  was  sup- 
posed to  safeguard  the  accuracy  of  "the  compiler."  He  now 
admits  that  he  overlooked  in  Miss  Cobbe's  preface  a  passage 
in  which  she  "was  careful  to  say,  ...  so  far  as  it  has 
been  possible,  the  use  or  absence  of  anesthetics  has  been  noticed 
in  regard  to  all  the  experiments  cited  in  this  book."  Mr.  Horsley 
in  the  appendix  to  his  letter,  which  we  publish  this  morning, 
shows  by  reference  to  some  twenty  cases  cited  in  "The  Nine 
Circles"  how  entirely  inconsistent  with  the  truth  this  guaran- 
tee is,  and  Dr.  Berdoe's  reluctant  acknowledgment  completes 
the  proof. 

A  still  more  remarkable  letter  appears  in  the  same 
number  of  the  Times  from  Prof.  C.  S.  Sherrington  of 
Liverpool.    He  sa}"s : 

I  find  in  the  book,  "The  Nine  Circles,"  three  instances  in 
which  I  am  by  name  and  deed  held  up  to  public  abhorrence. 
From  each  of  the  three  statements  made  about  me  the  employ- 
ment of  anesthesia  in  my  experiments  is  studiously  omitted, 
although  expressly  mentioned  in  each  of  the  published  papers 
on  which  these  statements  are  professed  to  rest.  In  two  out 
of  three  statements  I  am  accredited  with  inflicting  on  living 
animals,  and  without  the  employment  of  anesthetics,  a  dissec- 
tion and  procedure  that  I  pursued  only  on  animals  which  icere 
dead. 

Accordingly  the  society  withdrew  the  book  from  the 
market,  but  later  published  a  revised  second  edition. 

In  his  reply  to  Professor  Horsley's  letter  calling  atten- 
tion to  the  misstatements  in  the  first  edition,  the  excuses 
that  Dr.  Berdoe  gives  in  this  second  edition  are  very 
extraordinary.  Among  them,  for  example,  one  is  "the 
sentence  about  testing  the  sight  after  recovery  from  the 
anesthetic  was  overlooked. 

Another  excuse  is  "this  was  taken  at  second  hand 
from  another  report  where  the '  question  of  pain  was 
not  under  discussion."  In  a  third  he  says,  "We  have 
not  always  access  to  'original  papers'  and  can  only  rely 
on  such  reports  and  extracts  as  are  given  in  the  medical 
and  other  journals." 

I  ask  whether  it  is  fair,  square  dealing  to  base  grave 
charges  of  cruelty  on  sentences  "overlooked"  and  on 
"second-hand"  misinformation  ? 

But  Miss  Cobbe  was  by  no  means  satisfied  with  mis- 
representing English  medical  men.  In  the  pamphlet 
"Vivisection  in  America,"  I  find  on  page  9  a  letter  by  a 


29 

Boston  lawyer  in  which  he  says  of  American  experiments, 
"In  other  words,  animals  are  dissected  alive  usually 
without  the  use  of  anesthetics,  for  the  supposed  (but 
illusory)  gain  to  science."  (Italics  mine.)  I  have 
already  given  a  table  showing  that  only  twenty-six  ani- 
mals out  of  a  thousand  could  by  any  possibility  have 
suffered  any  pain,  and  that  even  these  were  anesthetized. 
Is  it  correct,  then,  to  say  that  animals  are  "dissected 
alive  usually  without  anesthetics"? 

Near  the  top  of  page  45  Miss  Cobbe's  pamphlet  reads 
as  follows : 

Dr.  Ott,  in  the  Journal  of  Physiology,  Vol.  II,  p.  42,  describes 
a  number  of  experiments  on  a  number  of  cats  not  etherized 
[italics  my  own],  for  the  purpose  of  making  observations  on 
the  physiology  of  the  spinal  cord. 

I  find  that  on  reading  the  original  paper  there  were 
four  series  of  experiments: 

In  the  first  series,  there  were  twenty  experiments.  In 
the  first  experiment  the  animal  was  killed  before  the 
experiment  began.  In.  eleven  other  instances  it  is 
expressly  stated  in  each  experiment  that  the  animals 
were  etherized.  Dr.  Ott  informs  me  that  the  other 
eight  were  so  etherized  and  that  he  invariably  etherizes 
the  animals. 

In  the  second  series  there  were  eight  experiments. 
On  page  52  of  the  Journal  of  Physiology  it  is  stated 
that  the  animals  were  etherized. 

The  third  series  consisted  of  ten  experiments,  and  on 
page  54  it  is  expressly  stated  that  the  animals  were 
etherized. 

The  fourth  series  consisted  of  ten  experiments  and 
again  on  page  60  it  is  stated  that  the  animals  were 
etherized.  We  see,  therefore,  that  Miss  Cobbe's  state- 
ment "not  etherized'-  is  untrue,  for  of  forty-eight  ani- 
mals, one  was  killed ;  in  thirty-nine  it  is  expressly  stated 
that  they  were  etherized ;  leaving  only  eight  out  of  forty 
as  to  the  etherization  of  which  nothing  is  said,  though  it 
was  done. 

On  pages  45  to  48  I  find  a  series  of  experiments  on 
the  surgery  of  the  pancreas  by  the  late  Dr.  Senn  of 
Chicago.  This  was  in  July,  1886,  at  a  time  when  the 
surgery  of  the  pancreas  was  just  beginning.  Two  pages 
and  a  half  of  Miss  Cobbe's  pamphlet  are  devoted  to 
describing  in  detail  experiments  which,  as  no  mention  is 


30 

made  in  her  pamphlet  of  ether,  one  would  certainly 
suppose  were  done  without  ether  and  would  certainly  be 
very  painful.  On  looking  at  page  142  of  the  original 
paper  I  find  that  it  is  expressly  stated  that  the  animals 
were  etherized. 

In  a  series  of  experiments  by  Halsted,  under  experi- 
ment jSTo.  6,  p.  51,  Miss  Cobbe's  pamphlet  says,  "Died 
under  the  operation,  which  was  carried  on  for  two  hours 
on  a  young,  small  brindle  dog,"  which  would  imply  two 
hours  of  "agony."  The  original  expressly  states  the 
fact  that  this  dog  died  from  the  effects  of  the  ether. 

So  much  for  Miss  Cobbe's  idea  of  reproducing  accu- 
rate accounts  of  the  experiments  to  which  she  refers. 

An  amusing  instance  of  misrepresentation  is  seen  in 
an  antivivisection  comment  made  on  one  of  Carrel's 
experiments  on  a  cat.  "How  intense  the  suffering  must 
have  been  to  cause  a  cat  (an  animal  usually  so  quiet 
and  reposeful)  to  spend  the  day  jumping  on  and  off  the 
furniture !"  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  kitten  was  only 
"playing  with  a  ball  of  paper." 

Another  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  sentences  are 
detached  from  their  context  and  made  to  mean  quite 
different  things  and  repeatedly  published  years  after 
the  falsity  of  the  statement  has  been  demonstrated  is 
shown  by  the  constant  inclusion  of  Sir  Frederick  Treves 
among  the  opponents  of  vivisection.  He  stated  of  one 
single  investigation  that  operations  on  the  intestines 
of  dogs  in  his  opinion  —  other  surgeons  do  not  hold 
the  same  opinion  —  were  useless  as  a  means  of  fitting 
the  surgeon  for  operations  on  the  human  bowel.  Ever 
since  this  utterance19  Sir  Frederick  Treves  has  been  con- 
stantly quoted  in  the  manner  mentioned,  yet  in  a  letter 
to  the  London  Times  of  April  18,  1902,  he  says: 

The  fallacy  of  vivisection  can  hardly  be  said  to  be  estab- 
lished by  the  failure  of  a  series  of  operations  dealing  with  one 
small  branch  of  practical  surgery.  Xo  one  is  more  keenly  aware 
than  I  am  of  the  great  benefits  conferred  on  suffering  humanity 
by  certain  researches  carried  out  by  means  of  vivisection. 

This  was  noticed  editorially  in  the  British  Medical 
Journal  of  April  26,  1902.  So  late  as  1909.  in  the  May 
number  of  the  Journal  of  Zobphily,  the  editor-in-chief, 
Mrs.  Caroline  Earle  White,  reprints  from  the  North 
American  of  April  12,  1909,  her  signed  letter,  and 
implies  that   Sir   Frederick  Treves   is  an  opponent   of 

19.  Treves,  Sir  Frederick  :  Lancet,  London,  Nov.  5,  1908. 


31 

vivisection,  seven  years  after  this  correction  had 
appeared.  In  the  number  of  the  same  journal  for  July, 
1909,  the  associate  editor  of  the  journal  prints  a  letter 
of  denial  from  Sir  Frederick  Treves,  and  yet  so  late  as 
the  number  for  March,  1911,  p.  177,  the  same  old  quota- 
tion from  Sir  Frederick  Treves  is  published  in  the  same 
journal  which  twenty-two  months  before  had  printed  his 
own  letter  of  denial.20' 21 

At  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Eesearch  Defense  Society 
Sir  Frederick  Treves,  in  referring  to  the  great  progress 
made  in  the  science  of  medicine,  said :  "This  progress 
has  in  the  main  been  accomplished  by  experiments  on 
animals."  Ought  not  his  name  hereafter  to  be  omitted 
from  the  list  of  the  opponents  of  vivisection  ? 

A  postal  card  issued  by  the  American  Antivivisection 
Society  in  Philadelphia  (there  are  several  others  of  the 
same  sort)  presents  a  picture  of  a  large  dog  with  his 
mouth  gagged  wide  open  and  his  paws  tied  "without 
anesthetic."  The  object  of  the  gag,  of  course,  is  to  pre- 
vent the  animal  from  biting  before  and  while  it  is  being 
etherized.  It  is  absurd  to  state  that  this  produces  any 
pain,  but  a  guide  at  the  traveling  antivivisection  exhi- 
bition explained  to  two  of  my  friends  that  it  was  used  to 
break  the  jaivs  of  the  dogs!  and  that  this  was  done 
"without  ariesthetics."  But  in  nearly  all  our  surgical 
operations  within  the  mouth,  on  the  tonsils,  cleft  palate, 
the  tongue,  etc.,  we  employ  gags  of  various  kinds  to 
keep  the  mouth  wide  open.  To  show  how  little  annoy- 
ance this  causes,  here  is  a  picture  (Fig.  2)  of  a  little 
girl,  4  years  old,  my  own  granddaughter,  with  a  mouth- 
gag  which  I  have  used  many  times  over  with  children 
and  adults  in  operations  about  the  mouth.  This'  particu- 
lar photograph,  it  will  be  observed,  was  taken  also  "with- 
out an  anesthetic."  It  was  not  necessary  to  tie  her 
hands  and  feet  as  is  done  with  dogs,  for  the  child 
regarded  the  whole  proceeding  of  photographing  her  with 
her  mouth  wide  open  as  a  "lark,"  and  sat  as  still  as  a 
mouse.  Is  it  necessary  to  add  that  her  jaw  was  not 
broken  ? 

Miss  Britton,  in  her  $300  antivivisection  prize  essay22 
vividly  describes  an  operation   (removal  of  the  breasts 

20.  Just  as  I  had  corrected  the  proof  of  this  paper,  April  29,  1912. 
I  received  throug'h  the  mail  from  Mrs.  Caroline  Earle  White  a  reprint 
of  her  letter  of  April  12,  1909,  with  the  same  misleading  quota- 
tion, thirty-three  months  after  Sir  Frederick  Treves'  letter  of  denial 
had  been  printed  in  her  own  journal. 

21.  Treves.  Sir  Frederick  :  Brit.  Med.  Jour..  July  8,  1911,  p.  82. 

22.  Our  Dumb  Animals,  January,  1910. 


3.2 


of  a  nursing  mother  dog)  which  was  never  done  at  all. 
This  fictitious  operation  is  described  in  "The  Nine 
Circles;"23  again  it  appears  in  Dr.  Albert  Leffingwell's 
essay,  "Is  Science  Advanced  bv  Deceit,"  published  in 
1800.  In  1901  Professor  Bowditch  called  Dr.  Leffing- 
well's  attention  to  the  fact  that  no  such  operation  was 


Fig.  2. — Mouth-gag  as  used  in  operations  about  the  mouth. 

ever  done.  In  Dr.  Leffingweirs  collected  essays  entitled 
"The  Vivisection  Question,"  on  page  109  of  the  second 
revised  edition  (1907),  there  is,  in  a  footnote,  a  correc- 
tion admitting  that  no  such  operation  was  ever  clone, 
but  on  page  G7  of  the  same  edition,  a  description  of 
this  same  operation  still  appears  uncorrected,  six  years 

23.   Second  Edition,  p.   28. 


33      • 

after  Bowditch's  letter  had  been  received  and  the  mis- 
statement acknowledged. 

In  the  Antivivisection  Exhibit  which  was  shown  in 
]STew  York,  in  the  winter  of  1909-1910,  Professor  Lee 
states  that  there  was  "an  oven  heated  by  gas  burners 
which  contains  the  stuffed  body  of  a  rabbit  and  which 
the  attendant  tells  you  is  used  for  the  purpose  of  baking 
live  animals  to  death,  and  this  also  is  performed  without 
anesthetics."  Then  to  add  still  further  pathos,  the  note 
at  the  end  of  the  label  on  the  oven  said  "gagging, 
muffling  or  severing  of  vocal  organs  prevents  tortured 
animals  giving  voice  aloud  piteously  to  such  terrible 
suffering."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  "the  oven  is  an  appa- 
ratus intended  for  the  incineration  of  the  .  .  .  refuse 
of  a  laboratory!"  I  might  add  that  it  is  a  constant 
practice  in  medicine  and  surgery  now  to  use  various 
forms  of  apparatus  for  the  purpose  of  "baking"  an  arm, 
leg  or  other  part  of  the  body,  and  lately  a  patient  of 
mine  has  had  her  arm  "baked"  almost  daily  for  weeks 
at  a  temperature  up  to  300°  F.  with  great  benefit. 

In  the  exhibit  of  the  American  Antivivisection  Society 
in  Philadelphia  in  Xovember,  1911,  a  portrait  of  a  dog 
was  shown  with  a  large  placard  stating  correctly  that  the 
dog  had  been  stolen  from  its  owner  and  sold  to  the 
University  of  Pennsylvania  for  experiment.  It  omitted 
to  state  the  further  fact,  which  is  perfectly  well  known, 
that  the  dog  was  kept  for  identification  under  Eule  1 
(page  12),  was  claimed,  identified  and  turned  over  to 
its  owner  and  not  used  for  experiment.  Such  a  placard 
stating  half  the  truth  but  not  the  whole  truth  inevitably 
leads  the  public  to  draw  a  false  conclusion. 

The  bodies  of  three  dogs  were  also  exhibited,  each 
labeled  "The  Vivisected  Product  of  'a  Philadelphia 
Laboratory."  All  show  gaping  wounds;  one,  in  fact, 
has  the  entire  abdomen  and  pelvis  wide  open.  Such  a 
condition  is  utterly  incompatible  with  any  research. 
Surgeons  and  physiologists  when  experimenting  on 
animals  are  necessarily  as  scrupulously  careful  in  their 
antiseptic  technic  as  in  operations  on  human  beings. 
Wounds  are  accurately  closed  and  carefully  dressed. 
Any  experimenter  leaving  wounds  wide  open  and 
undressed  as  are  those  in  these  dogs  would  invite  failure 
in  every  case,  and  when  he  published  his  results  and  had 
to  confess  to- a  high  and  needless  mortality,  he  would 
discredit  himself. 


•        34 

One  of  these  dogs  shows  an  absurd  operation  in  the 
neck.  The  great  blood-vessels  from  the  right  and  left 
sides  of  the  neck  have  been  drawn  together  in  front  of 
the  windpipe  and  then  tied  —  a  procedure  that  is 
unimaginable  to  any  surgeon.  Moreover,  from  the  wide- 
open  abdomen  and  pelvis  the  following  organs  have  been 
removed :  the  stomach,  all  the  large  and  small  intestine, 
except  a  portion  a  few  inches  long,  the  spleen,  the 
pancreas,  both  the  kidneys  and  the  bladder.  The  liver, 
however,  is  left.  Cannot  even  any  non-medical  person 
of  ordinary  intelligence  see  that  if  all  these  organs  were 
really  removed  and,  in  addition,  the  great  blood-vessels 
of  the  neck  on  both  sides  were  really  tied,  thus  cutting 
off  almost  all  of.  the  blood-supply  to  the  brain,  and  then 
the  neck  and  the  abdomen  were  left  wide  open,  the  death 
of  the  animal  on  the  table  would  be  inevitable? 

About  a  dozen  medical  men,  all  teachers  in  medical 
schools,  after  careful  inspection  of  these  dogs,  unite  in 
believing  that  all  or  nearly  all  of  these  mutilations  must 
have  been  done  post  mortem  and  not  during  life.  More- 
over, there  is  no  evidence  that  these  animals  were  really 
"vivisected,"  that  is,  operated  on  during  life. 

Still  further,  granting  that  all  these  operations  were 
done  for  research  and  during  life,  if  the  animals  were 
etherized  no  pain  would  have  been  felt  and  no  cruelty 
perpetrated.  The  significant  omission  to  say  anything 
as  to  any  anesthetic,  like  the  omission  as  to  the  restora- 
tion to  its  owner  of  the  stolen  dog,  entirely  misleads 
the  public. 

Dr.  Henry  P.  Bowditch24  quotes  an  extraordinary 
statement  of  the  late  Henry  Bergh,  an  ardent  antivivi- 
sectionist.    Mr.  Bergh  says : 

Robert  MacDonald,  M.D.,  on  being  questioned,  declared  that 
he  had  opened  the  veins  of  a  dying  person,  remember,  and  had 
injected  the  blood  of  an  animal  into  them  many  times  and  had 
met  with  brilliant  success.  In  other  words,  this  potenate  has 
discovered  the  means  of  thwarting  the  decree  of  Providence 
when  a  person  was  dying,  and  snatching  away  from  its  Maker 
a  soul  which  He  had  called  away  from  earth. 

I  have  happily  been  able  to  rescue  quite  a  number  of 
dying  persons  who  but  for  my '  timely  aid  would  have 
been  dead  persons.  Instead  of  supposing  that  I  had 
"thwarted  the  decrees  of  Providence  and  snatched  a 
soul  from  its  Maker,"  I  have  always  been  under  the 

24.  Bowditch,  Henry  P.  :  Animal  Experimentation,  p.  72. 


35 

impression:  (1)  that  it  was  not  in  my  feeble  power  to 
thwart  the  decrees  of  the  Almighty,  and  (2)  the  very 
fact  that  I  was  able  to  save  a  dying  person  from  death 
was  the  best  evidence  that  the  decree  of  Providence  was 
that  the  patient  at  that  time  should  live  and  not  die. 

But  it  seems  that  in  the  catechism  of  antivivisection 
it  is  an  impious  crime  to  save  the  life  of  a  dying  person, 
though  I  suppose  it  is  proper  to  save  the  life  of  a 
patient  who  is  only  "sick." 

In  the  Journal  of  Zoopliily  for  April,  1910,  p.  44, 
under  the  caption  "Still  More  Barbarity,"  is  an  editorial 
signed  "C.  E.  W.,"  the  initials  of  the  editor-in-chief. 
In  this  editorial  it  is  stated  as  to  certain  experiments 
of  Dr.  Wentworth  of  Boston  that  they  were  "upon 
between  forty  and  fifty  little  children  in  the  Children's 
Hospital  of  that  city,  every  one  of  whom  died  after  the 
performance  of  his  operation."  The  "casual  reader" 
would  certainly  understand  that  every  one.  of  these  forty 
to  fifty  children  died  as  a  result  of  the  operation. 

Let  us  see  what  the  real  facts  are.25  In  1895,  in  a 
case  of  possible  tuberculous  meningitis,  Dr.  Wentworth 
did  lumbar  puncture  in  order  to  make  a  positive  diag- 
nosis. Lumbar  puncture  consists  in  introducing  a  rather 
long  hypodermic  needle  between  the  vertebras  in  the 
small  of  the  back  (lumbar  region)  and  withdrawing 
some  of  the  fluid  from  around  the  spinal  cord.  This 
fluid  circulates  freely  to  and  fro  both  within  the  brain 
and  its  membranes  and  within  the  membranes  of  the 
spinal  cord.  The  needle  is  inserted  below  the  end  of 
the  spinal  cord,  rarely  with  general  anesthesia,  some- 
times with  local  anesthesia  of  the  skin,  but  generally 
without  even  this,  as  the  pain  is  slight  and  only 
momentary. 

.  In  1895  this  method  of  diagnosis  was  comparatively 
new.  Its  value  was  uncertain,  its  dangers,  if  any,  were 
not  determined.  The  appearance  of  the  fluid  and  the 
nature  of  its  microscopic  contents  in  human  beings  were 
imperfectly  known.  Dr.  Wentworth  in  this  case  used  the 
method  for  diagnosis.  Alarming  symptoms  appeared, 
but  passed  away.  The  child  was  proved  not  to  have 
meningitis  and  "left  the  hospital  shortly  afterward  per- 
fectly well." 

In  order  to  determine  whether  this  case  was  excep- 
tional, and  the  dangers  only  accidental,  or  always  to  be 
feared  (which  if  true  might  compel- the  entire  abandon- 

25.  Boston  Med.  and  Surg.  Joui\,  Aug.  6  and  13,  1896. 


3G 

ment  of  lumbar  puncture),  he  repeated  the  operation 
most  cautiously  at  first  and  finally  with  surer  faith  in 
its  safety  and  value  in  twenty-nine  other  cases.  In  fifteen 
of  the  thirty  cases  the  puncture  was  expressly  clone  in 
order  to  make  a  diagnosis  — -  meningitis  or  other  diseases 
of  the  brain  and  spinal  cord  being  suspected.  In  the 
other  fifteen  cases,  while  there  probably  was  no  cerebral 
or  spinal  disease,  it  was  of  great  importance  to  know 
whether  examination  of  the  cerebrospinal  fluid  might 
throw  any  unexpected  side-light  on  these  diseases,  and 
if  not,  it  would  at  least  disclose  Avhat  the  normal  con- 
dition, appearance  and  microscopic  contents  of  the 
fluid  were. 

Forty-five  punctures  in  all  were  made  on  the  thirty 
children.  In  three  cases  the  puncture  was  made  after 
death.  Of  the  twenty-seven  living  children,  fourteen 
died.  Not  one  of  the  fourteen  died  from  the  operation, 
but,  as  the  post-mortems  showed,  from  meningitis, 
tuberculosis,  pneumonia,  water  on  the  brain,  convulsions, 
etc.,  as  is  expressly  stated  in  each  case  in  the  paper. 

But  the  editorial  says  "between  forty  and  fifty  little 
children  .  .  .  every  one  of  whom  died  after  the 
performance  of  the  operation.  I  have  before  me  several 
antivivisection  pamphlets  published  in  Xew  York,  Phila- 
delphia and  Washington  in  which  Wentworth's  cases  are 
narrated  as  cases  of  "human  vivisection,"  and  it  is 
usually  stated  that  "many  of  them  died,"  but  the  reader 
would  still  suppose  that  it  was  as  a  result  of  the  opera- 
tion. In  two  of  these  pamphlets,  "brief  abstracts"  of 
five  cases  are  given,  usually  only  one  to  three  lines  long. 
The  post-mortem  reports  published  in  Wentworth's 
paper  showed  that  these  five  patients  died  from  menin- 
gitis (two  cases),  infantile  wasting,  tuberculosis  and 
defective  development  of  the  brain  and  convulsions.  Yet 
the  "casual  reader"  would  inevitably  suppose  that  they 
died  from  the  lumbar  puncture  as  no  other  cause  of 
death  is  stated  in  these  pamphlets. 

When  Dr.  Cannon  pointed  out  the  inaccuracy  of  the 
editorial  of  April,  1910,  in  the  Journal  of  Zobpliilij, 
that  same  journal  in  the  issue  for  July,  1911,  p.  219, 
in  a  paper  signed  "M.  F.  L."  (the  initials  of  its  associate 
editor)  not  only  did  not  acknowledge  the  error,  but 
practically  repeated  it  by  saying  that  Dr.  Cannon  is 
"severe  on  the  Journal  of  Zobphihj  for  having  referred 
last  year  to  Dr.  Wentwortlrs  forty-five  experiments  on 


37 

children  and  for  having  mentioned  the  fact  that  the 
children  died  after  the  operation."     (Italics  mine.) 

Is  it  fair  dealing  to  give  such  very  brief  abstracts  and 
omit  the  most  important  facts  as  is  done  here?  In  1901 
I  pointed  out16  these  misstatements  and  what  the  truth 
was,  but  the  same  pamphlets  have  been  constantly  dis- 
tributed without  any  correction.  In  November,  1910, 
nearly  ten  years  after  I  had  exposed  the  matter,  Dr. 
Cannon  states  that  one  of  these  pamphlets  was  sent  to 
a  friend  of  his  with  a  letter  from  the  president  of  the 
New  York  Antivivisection  Society,  saying,  "You  may 
rely  on  them  as  being  absolutely  accurate  and  authentic  !" 
Still  worse:  In  April,  1910,  "C.  E.  W."  enlarges  the 
number  from  thirty  to  "between  forty  and  fifty"  and 
actually  says  that  "every  one"  of  them  died,  and 
"M.  F.  L."  practically  repeats  the  misstatement  by  saying 
that  "the  children  died  after  the  operation."20 

-Suppose  thirty  friends  dined  together  at  the  Bellevue- 
Stratford,  then  took  a  train  and  as  a  result  of  a  collision 
fourteen  were  killed.;  would  a  reporter,  and  still  less  an 
editor,  be  justified  in  stating  in  print  "between  forty 
and  fifty  friends  dined  last  night  at  the  Bellevue-Strat- 
ford.  Every  one  of  them  died  shortly  after  partaking  of 
the  dinner"  entirely  omitting  the  collision  as  the  real 
cause  of  death  ? 

Now  after  fifteen  years,  what  has  been  the  result  of 
these  investigations  by  Dr.  Wentworth  and  others? 
Lumbar  puncture  is  a  thoroughly  well-established  means 
of  diagnosis.  That  it  is  attended  with  practically  no 
danger  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  it  is  now  a  routine 
practice  in  certain  diseases,  even  much  more  important 
than  recording  the  pulse  and  the  temperature.  Holmes27 
states  that  he  has  done  the  operation  "over  four  hundred 
times  and  has  never  met  with  an  accident." 

It  is  not  only  always  done  in  some  diseases,  but  is 
repeated  two,  three  or  more  times  in  the  same  patient  in 
cases  of  cerebrospinal  meningitis.  As  I  showed  in  my 
paper  in  the  Ladies'  Home  Journal   (April,  1910)   the 

26.  In  Mrs.  White's  reply  to  this  address  (p.  144)  she  "pleads 
guilty"  to  the  charge  of  misstating,  as  to  these  children,  "that  they 
all  died,"  and  says  she  "unconsciously  exaggerated."  On  page 
143  she  states  that  she  is  "most  particular  to  avoid  not  only  false- 
hood, but  even  exaggeration."  It  is  hardly  correct  to  say  that  the 
statement  that  there  were  "between  forty  and  fifty  children"  and 
that  "they  all  died"  is  an  "exaggeration"  of  the  real  fact,  namely, 
that  there  were  only  twenty-seven  living  children  operated  on,  and 
of  the  fourteen  who  died  not  one  of  them  died  from  the  operation, 
but  from  well-known  causes  revealed  by  the  post-mortem  examina- 
tions and  fully  stated,  in  each  case,  in  Dr.  Wentworth's  paper. 

27.  Holmes!  Arch.  Tediat.,   October,   1908,   p.  738. 


38 

son  of  then  governor,  now  Mr.  Justice  Hughes,  of  the 
United  States  Supreme  Court,  a  student  at  Brown  Uni- 
versity/stricken  with  a  violent  attack  of  the  epidemic  form 
of  the  disease,  had  lumbar  puncture  done  three  times; 
the  first  time  in  order  to  make  a  diagnosis  and  also  for 
the  injection  of  Flexner's  serum,  the  second  and  third 
times  for  two  other  injections  of  the  serum,  which 
snatched  him  from  otherwise  practically  certain  death. 

In  this  disease,  Eoyer28  says :  "It  is  absolutely  neces- 
sary to  do  a  lumbar  puncture"  to  make  a  diagnosis,  and 
Dunn29  says  emphatically,  "Without  lumbar  puncture  a 
diagnosis  of  cerebrospinal  meningitis  is  absolutely  with- 
out value  for  scientific,  statistical  or  therapeutic  pur- 
poses." As  there  are  half  a  dozen  different  forms  of 
meningitis,  and  the  remedy  for  the  deadly  epidemic 
form  is  of  no  use  in  the  other  forms,  lumbar  puncture, 
the  only  absolutely  positive  means  of-  differentiating 
them,  cannot  be  dispensed  with. 

Moreover,  its  use  has  been  broadened,  as  shown  in  the 
case  of  young  Mr.  Hughes.  No  longer  are  we  content 
to  use  it  merely  as  a  means  of  diagnosis,  but  it  is  the 
only  means  of  successful  treatment  of  that  terribly  fatal 
malady.  It  is  also  used  for  diagnosis  in  several  surgical 
diseases  and  injuries.  Moreover,  the  method  of  spinal 
anesthesia,  which  is  most  useful  in  cases  in  which  other 
methods  of  anesthesia  are  too  dangerous,  is  exclusively 
by  means  of  lumbar  puncture,  the  cocain  or  other  local 
anesthetic  being  injected  around  the  spinal  cord  by  the 
hypodermic  syringe.30 

When  a  witness  is  called,  it  is  not  allowable  for  the 
party  calling  him  to  accept  a  part  of  his  testimony  and 
refuse  to  accept  the  rest,  yet  this  is  precisely  what  the 
opponents  of  research  do.  They  always  eite,  for  example, 
the  late  Professor  Bigelow,  printing  his  earlier  utter- 
ances based  on  the  suffering  he  saw  at  Alfort  in  the 
preanesthetic  days,  but  they  carefully  omit  the  following 
later  expression  of  opinion:31 

28.  Royer  :  Arch.  Pediat.,  October,  1908,  p.  729. 

29.  Dunn,  Charles  Hunter  :  Am.  Jour.  Dis.  Child.,  February,  1911, 
p.  95. 

30.  Those  who  wish  to  consult  by  far  the  best  statement  for  gen- 
eral use  of  the  steps  by  which  epidemic  meningitis  has  been  con- ' 
quered  and  the  results  of  the  new  but  now  thoroughly  well-estab- 
lished serum  treatment  by  lumbar  puncture  can  obtain  a  cony  of 
Dunn's  paper  on  this  subject  (No.  21  of  this  series)  by  enclosing 
4  cents  (or  50  cents  for  twenty-five  copies)  to  the  Journal  of  the 
American   Medical   Association,    Chicago. 

31.  Bigelow,  Henry  J.  :  Anesthesia  :  Addresses  and  Other  Papers, 
Boston,  1900,  p.  371. 


39 

The  dissection  of  an  animal  in  a  state  of  insensibility  is  no 
more  to  be  criticized  than  is  the  abrupt  killing  of  it,  to  which 
no  one  objects.  The  confounding  of  a  painful  vivisection  and 
an  experiment  which  does  not  cause  pain — either  because  the 
animal  is  under  ether,  or  because  the  experiment  itself  is  pain- 
less,' like  those  pertaining  to  the  action  of  most  drugs,  or 
because  it  is  a  trivial  one  and  gives  little  suffering — has  done 
great  damage  to  the  cause  of  humanity,  and  has  placed  the 
opponent  of  vivisection  at  a  great  disadvantage.  ...  A 
painless  experiment  on  an  animal  is  unobjectionable. 

So,  too,  when  the  statements  of  Horsley,  Ott,  Crile 
and  others  that  the  animals  were  anesthetized  and  suf- 
fered no  pain  are  shown  to  antiviviseetionists,  they  reply, 
"We  do  not  believe  it,  for  the  only  testimony  to  this 
insensibility  to  pain  is  that  of  the  vivisectors  themselves." 
They  greedily  accept  as  true  all  their  other  statements 
as  to  the  operations  they  did,  etc.,  down  to  the  minutest 
details,  but  they  refuse  to  accept  those  as  to  anesthesia. 
!No  court  of  law  would  sanction  such  a  course. 

In  reviewing  the  preceding  misstatements  and  those 
quoted  in  my  former  paper10  I  have  been  compelled  to 
conclude  that  it  is  not  safe  to  accept  any  statement 
which  appears  in  antivivisection  literature  as  true,  or 
any  quotation  or  translation  as  correct,  until  I  have 
compared  them  with  the  originals  and  verified  their 
accuracy  for  myself.  Xot  seldom  this  is  impossible,  as 
no  reference  to  the  volume,  month,  day  or  sometimes 
even  the  year  of  publication  is  given. 

Lest  the  reader  think  this  too  severe  a  statement  I 
will  refer  to  only  one  instance  in  the  anonymous 
pamphlet,  '"Human  Vivisection,"  in  addition  to  others 
already  shown  to  be  grossly  inaccurate. 

On  page  9  in  the  account  of  Sanarelli's  five  experi- 
ments in  the  endeavor  to  inoculate  yellow  fever,  the 
phrase  "'the  final  collapse"  appears  as  an  alleged  transla- 
tion of  the  original  Italian.  The  word  * final"  does  not 
occur  in  the  original  Moreover,  the  collapse  was  not 
"final,"  for  every  one  of  the  five  patients  recovered,  yet 
the  pamphlet  says  that  "some  if  not  all  of  them,  died." 
The  phrases  "scientific  murder"  and  "scientific  assassin- 
ation" are  also  freely  used.  Even  the  cover  and  the 
title-page  of  this  pamphlet  have  as  a  motto,  "Is  scientific 
murder  a  pardonable  crime?"  As  not  a  single  patient 
died,  were  they  really  "murdered"  or  "assassinated"  ? 


40 


CONCLUSIONS 

In  thirty  years  the  sixteen  [British]  antivivisection 
societies  have  received  more  than  £100,000  ($500,000) 
according  to  Mr.  Stephen  Coleridge's  testimony  before 
the  Boyal  Commission  on  Vivisection  (Questions  10256 
to  10260).  The  American  societies  have  had  many 
bequests  given  to  them,  and  in  the  aggregate  must  have 
also  spent  a  large  sum  of  money. 

On  the  other  side,  the  friends  of  research  and  progress 
have  had  little  money,  have  had  to  stop  research  and 
waste  a  deal  of  precious  time  in  defending  their  benefi- 
cent researches  from  the  attacks  of  the  antivivisection- 
ists;  the  rest  of  the  time  they  have  quietly  gone  about 
their  business,  adding  to  the  sum  of  our  knowledge  and 
forging  new  and  more  efficient  weapons  against  disease 
and  death. 

What,  then,  is  the  net  result?  What  have  the  friends 
of  research  accomplished,  and  what  achievements  can 
the  foes  of  research  show?  Let  me  put  it  in  a  con- 
trasted tabular  form  and  confine  it  to  what  has  occurred 
during  my  own  professional  life. 

THE  ACHIEVEMENTS   OF   THE   FRIENDS   OF  RESEARCH 

1.  They  have  discovered  and  developed  the  antiseptic 
method  and  so  have  made  possible  all  the  wonderful 
results  of  modern  surgery. 

2.  They  have  made  possible  practically  all  modern 
abdominal  surgery,  including  operations  on  the  stomach, 
intestines,  appendix,  liver,  gall-stones,  pancreas,  spleen, 
kidneys;  etc. 

3.  They  have  made  possible  all  the  modern  surgery 
of  the  brain. 

•4.  They  have  recently  made  possible  a  new  surgery 
of  the  chest,  including  the  surgery  of  the  heart,  lungs, 
aorta,  esophagus,  etc. 

5.  They  have  almost  entirely  abolished  lockjaw  after 
operations  and  even  after  accidents. 

6.  They  have  reduced  the  death-rate  after  compound 
fractures  from  two  out  of  three,  i.  e.,  sixty-six  in  a 
hundred,  to  less  than  one  in  a  hundred. 

7.  Thev  have  reduced  the  death-rate  of  ovariotomy 
from  two  out  of  three,  or  sixty-six  in  a  hundred,  to  two 
or  three  out  of  a  hundred. 

8.  They  have  made  the  death-rate  after  operations 
like  hernia,  amputation  of  the  breast  and  of  most  tumors 
a  negligible  factor.   ■ 


41 

9.  They  have  abolished  yellow  fever  —  a  wonderful 
triumph.32 

10.  They  have  enormously  diminished  the  ravages  of 
the  deadly  malaria,  and  its  abolition  is  only  a  matter 
of  time. 

11.  They  have  reduced  the  death-rate  of  hydrophobia 
from  12  or  11  per  cent,  of  persons  bitten  to  0.77  per  cent. 

12.  They  have  devised  a  method- of  direct  transfusion 
of  blood  which  has  already  saved  very  many  lives. 

13.  They  have  cut  down  the  death-rate  in  diphtheria 
all  over  the  civilized  world.  In  nineteen  European  and 
American  cities  it  has  fallen  from  79.9  deaths  per 
hundred  thousand  of  population  in  1891,  when  the  anti- 
toxin treatment  was  begun,  to  nineteen  deaths  per  hun- 
dred thousand  in  1905 — less  than  one-quarter  of  its 
death-rate  before  the  introduction  of  the  antitoxin. 

11.  They  have  reduced  the  mortality  of  cerebrospinal 
meningitis  from  75  or  even  90  odd  per  cent,  to  20  per 
cent,  and  less. 

15.  They  have  made  operating  for  goiter  almost  per- 
fectly safe. 

1G.  They  have  assisted  in  cutting  down  the  death- 
.  rate  of  tuberculosis  by  from  30  to  50  per  cent,  for  Koch's 
discovery  of  the  tubercle  bacillus  is  the  cornerstone  of 
all  our  modern  sanitary  achievements. 

17.  In  the  British  Army  and  Navy  they  have  abolished 
Malta  fever,  which  in  1905,  before  their  researches, 
attacked  nearly  1,300  soldiers  and  sailors.  In  1907  there 
were  in  the  army  only  eleven  cases;  in  1908,  five  cases; 
in  1909,  one  case. 

18.  They  have  almost  abolished  childbed  fever,  the 
chief  former  peril  of  maternity,  and  have  reduced  its 
mortality  from  five  or  ten  up  even  to  fifty-seven  in  every 
hundred  mothers  to  one  in  1,250  mothers. 

19.  They  have  very  recently  discovered  a  remedy 
which  bids  fair  to  protect  innocent  wives  and  unborn 
children,  besides  many  others  in  the  community  at  large, 
from  the  horrible  curse  of  syphilis. 

20.  They  have  discovered  a  vaccine  against  typhoid 
fever,  which  among  soldiers  in  camps  has  totally  abolished 

32.  Mrs.  White  in  her  letter  (p.  144)  argues  that  this  statement 
is  incorrect  because,  forsooth,  yellow  fever  "is  still  flourishing  in  a 
number  of  places  in  South  America,  Central  America  and  Mexico." 
Of  course  it  is,  but  all  the  world  knows  that  if  they  adopted  the 
methods  of  Colonel  Gorgas  in  the  Canal  Zone,  yellow  fever  would 
soon  be  banished  from  these  other  places.  Since  May  17,  1906  (now 
[October,  1912]  almost  six  and  a  half  years  ago),  Dot  a  single  case 
of  yellow  fever  has  originated  on  the  isthmus  ! 


42 

typhoid  fever,  as  President  Taft  has  so  recently  and  so 
convincingly  stated. .  The  improved  sanitation  which  has 
helped  to  do  this  is  itself  largely  the  result  of  bac- 
teriologic  experimentation. 

21.  They  are  gradually  nearing  the  discovery  of  the 
cause,  and  then  we  hope  of  the  cure,  of  those  dreadful 
scourges  of  humanity,  cancer,  infantile  paralysis  and 
other  children's  diseases. 

Who  that  loves  his  fellow  creatures  would  dare  to  stay 
the  hands  of  the  men  who  may  lift  the  curse  of  infantile 
paralysis,  scarlet  fever  and  measles  from  our  children 
and  of  cancer  from  the  whole  race?  If  there  be  such 
cruel  creatures,  enemies  of  our  children  and  of  humanity, 
let  them  stand  up  and  be  counted. 

22.  As  Sir  Frederick  Treves  has  stated,  it  has  been 
by  experiments  on  animals  that  our  knowledge  of  the 
pathology,  methods  of  transmission  and  the  means  of 
treatment  of  the  fatal  "sleeping-sickness"  of  Africa  has 
been  obtained  and  is  being  increased. 

23.  They  have  enormously  benefited  animals  by  dis- 
covering the  causes  and  in  many  cases  the  means  of 
preventing  tuberculosis,  rinderpest,  anthrax,  glanders, 
hog  cholera,  chicken  cholera,  lumpy  jaw  and  other  dis- 
eases of  animals,  some  of  which  also  attack  man.  If 
the  suffering  dumb  creatures  could  but  speak,  they  too 
would  pray  that  this  good  work  should  still  continue 
unhindered. 

THE   ACHIEVEMENTS    OF    THE   FOES    OF   RESEARCH 

Not  a  single  human  life  has  been  saved  by  their  efforts. 

Not  a  single  beneficent  discovery,  has  been  made  by 
them. 

Not  a  single  disease  has  been  abated  or  abolished  by 
them. 

All  that  they  have  done  is  to  resist  progress  —  to 
spend  .$500,000  in  thirty  years  in  Great  Britain  alone, 
and  very  large  amounts  of  money  in  the  United  States 
■ — and  to  conduct  a  campaign  of  abuse  and  gross  mis- 
representation. 

They  apparently  care  little  or  nothing  for  the  con- 
tinued suffering  and  death  of  human  beings,  the  grief 
and  not  seldom  the  ensuing  poverty  of  their  families, 
provided  that  twenty-six  out  of  every  thousand  dogs 
and  cats,  monkeys  and  guinea-pigs,  mice  and  frogs 
experimented  on  shall  escape  some  physical  suffering. 

They  insist,  therefore,  that  all  experimental  research 
on  animals  shall  stop  and  —  astounding  cruelty  —  that 


43 

thousands  of  human  beings  shall  continue  year  after 
year  to  suffer  and  to  die. 

The  Age  of  Experiment  is  the  Age  of  Progress.  This 
is  true  in  mechanics,  in  engineering,  in  electricity,  in 
every  department  of  human  knowledge  in  which  experi- 
mental investigation  is  possible. 

Medicine  is  no  exception.  Stop  experiment  and  you 
stop  progress.  But  while  stopping  progress  in  other 
departments  only  means'  that  we  shall  have  no  further 
development  in  the  external  comforts  and  conveniences 
of  life,  the  arrest  of  the  experimental  method  in  medicine 
means  that  progress  in  the  knowledge  of  the  cause  and 
cure  of  disease  shall  stop  and  that  our  present  sufferings 
and  sorrowful  bereavements  from  the  onslaught  of  can- 
cer, scarlet  fever,  measles,  whooping-cough  and  all  the 
other  foes  of  health  and  life  —  especially  of  our  dear 
children  —  must  continue. 

In  the  last  fifty  years  we  have  made  more  progress 
than  in  the  preceding  fifty  centuries.  I  believe  that  if 
experimental  research  is  continued  and  aided,  the  next 
fifty  years  will  be  still  more  prolific  of  benefit  to  man- 
kind than  even  the  past  fifty. 

I  have  absolute  confidence  in  the  humanitjr,  the  intelli- 
gence and  the  common  sense  of  this  nation  that  they 
will  see  to  it  that  this  progress  shall  not  be  halted  by 
the  outcries  and  misstatements  of  the  antivivisectionists. 

Dr.  S.  Weil"  Mitchell,  when  visiting  the  Antivivisec- 
tion  Exhibition  in  Philadelphia,  put  the  matter  in  a 
nutshell  Avhen  he  said  to  one  of  the  guides,  "Your 
exhibition  is  not  quite  complete.  You  should  place  here 
a  dead  baby  and  there  a  dead  guinea-pig  with  the  motto, 
"Choose  between  them.'*?3 

33.  Of  course,  not  all  antivivisectionists  are  to  be  grouped  with 
those  who  are  responsible  for  the  letters,  the  epithets  and  the  per- 
sistent misstatements  mentioned  in  this  paper.  I  have,  for  example, 
some  most  esteemed  personal  friends  who  are  more  or  less  opposed 
to  research  by  means  of  experiments  on  animals.  But  I  believe 
that  most  of  the  reasonable  persons  who  take  this  stand  are  not 
well  informed,  either  as  to  the  character  of  such  researches,  to 
their  profound  importance  to  the  human  race  and  to  animals,  or  to 
their  wonderfully  beneficent  results.  They  are  misled  by  the  mis- 
statements of  the  chief  antivivisectionists,  and  their  kindly  hearts 
are  so  shocked  by  the  asserted  "torture"  of  dogs,  cats,  etc.,  that  they 
lose  sight  of  the  real  and  horrible  torture  inflicted  on  human  beings 
by  diseases  which  the  advocates  of  research  are  endeavoring  to 
banish.  Had  they  ever  stood  as  in  the  past  I  have  stood,  knife  in  hand, 
by  the  bedside  of  a  gasping  livid  child  struggling  for  breath,  ready 
to  do  a  tracheotomy  when  the  surely  tightening  grip  of  diphtheria 
made  it  necessary  to  interfere,  they  would  hail  with  delight  the 
blessed  antitoxin  which  has  abolished  the  knife  and  enormously 
diminished  tbe  mortality  of  that  curse  of  childhood.  They  would 
surely  bless  God  that  such  a  discovery  as  this  antitoxin  could  be 
made  solely  by  experiments  on  animals.  The  sufferings  of  a  few 
such  animals  is  as  nothing  compared  with  the  lessening  of  suffer- 
ing and  saving  of  life  for  multitudes  of  human  beings  (to  say 
nothing  of  the  saving  of  sorrow  and  suffering  to  their  families 
and  friends),  not  only  now,  but  for  all  time  to  come. 


PAMPHLETS  ON 

Medical  Fakes  and  Fakers 

Consumption  Cure  Fakes 

The  ten  different  preparations  discussed  in  this  pam- 
phlet were  originally  dealt  with  in  The  Journal  of 
the  American  Medical  Association.  The  matter  has 
been  somewhat  elaborated,  several  illustrations  added 
and  the  whole  reprinted  and  attractively  bound  in  stiff 
paper  cover.     The  various  fakes  dealt  with  are  : 


Aicsol  (Lloyd)  * 

Nature's  Creation  * 

J.  Lawrence  Hill,  M.D.* 

Hoff's  Cure 

Sartolin 

International  Institute  * 

[*This  matter  also  appears  in  indi 


Lung  Germine  * 
Yonkermann's  "Tuberculo- 

zyne"  * 
Wilson's  Cure 
Oxidaze — Oleozone — Jlijdro- 

cine  * 

idual  pamphlet  form,  price  4  cents] 


Cancer  Fakes 

The  United  States  government  has,  within  the  last 
two  or  three  years,  investigated  a  number  of  concerns 
exploiting  so-called  cures  for  cancer.  In  practically 
every  case  these  companies  have  been  declared  fraud- 
ulent and  the  use  of  the  United  States  mails  denied 
them.  This  pamphlet  contains  the  exposes  of  the  fol- 
lowing concerns : 

Rupert  Wells  »  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Chamlee  d  Co.* 

Q.  M.  Curry  *  B.  F.  Bye     } 

Drs.  Mixer  *  W.  O.  Bye     \  * 

T oxo- Absorbent  Company  *  L.  T.  Leach] 

[*This  matter  also  appears  in  individual  pamphlet  form,  price  4  cents] 

Medical  Institutes 

Some  of  the  cruelest  frauds  perpetrated  by  quacks 
are  those  carried  on  under  the  name  of  Medical 
Institutes.  This  pamphlet  deals  with  three  frauds  of 
this  kind — 

Wisconsin  Medical  Institute        Epileptic  Institute 
Boston  and  Bellevue  Institute 

Convictions  Under  the  Food  and  Drugs  Act 

The  convictions  that  the  government  has  obtained 
against  the  adulterators  of  drugs  and  similar  prep- 
arations are  described  technically  in  official  documents 
known  as  "Notices  of  Judgment."  One  hundred  and 
forty-eight  of  these  cases  are  here  abstracted  in  popu- 
lar form. 

(continued  on  back  cover) 

Prices  of  these  four  pamphlets  assorted  as  desired  : 
One  copy,  6  cents  ;  five  copies,  25  cents  ;  ten  copies,  40 
cents  ;  twenty-five  copies,  75  cents. 

Stamps  acceptable  for  amounts  under  fifty  cents. 


****.mr* 


i,a. 


HISTORICAL 
COLLECTION 


Medical  Fakes  and  Fakers  -  (Continued) 

Viavi 

A  concern  sells  nostrums  for  "female  trouble." 

Alcola 

A  fake  cure  for  drunkenness. 

Sanatogen 

Cottage  cheese  as  an  elixir  of  life. 

Tuberclecide 
A  fraudulent  "consumption  cure." 

Dr.  Branaman 
A  "cure  for  deafness"  fraud  in  Kansas  City,   Mo: 

Murine  Eye  Remedy 

The  modern  Colonel  Sellers. 

Mrs.  Cora  B.  Miller 

A  mail-order  medical  fraud  in  Kokomo,  Ind. 
Carnegie  University 

A  fraudulent  "school*'  that  sells  diplomas  for  $50. 

Fake  Gall-Stone  Cures 

"Fruitola"  and  "Mayr's  Stomach  Remedy." 

Carson's  Temple  of  Health 

A  Kansas  City  fakery. 

Stuart's  Plas-Tr-Pads  and  J.  B.  L.  Cascade 

Two  fraudulently  exploited  mechanical  devices. 

Woods'  Cure  for  Drunkenness 

An  international  fake  fraudulently  sold. 

The  Bertha  C.  Day  Company 

A  mail-order  medical  concern  of  Fort  Wayne,  Ind. 

The  Interstate  Remedy  Company 

A  mail-order  fake  with  a  "free  recipe"  bait. 
The  Oxydonor  and  Similar  Fakes 

The  gas-pipe  therapy  frauds. 

Press  Agents  and  Preservatives 

How  the  borax  trust  tries  to  mold  public  opinion. 

Van  Bysterveld  Medicine  Company 
A  fraudulent  Grand  Rapids,  Mich.,  concern. 

American  College  of  Mechano-Therapy 

A   correspondence  school  of  "curative  mechanics." 

Marforie  Hamilton's  Obesity  Cure 

A  widely  advertised  fat-reduction  humbug. 

Prices  of  these  nineteen  pamphlets,  assorted  as  de- 
sired :  One  copy,  4  cents ;  five  copies,  15  cents ;  ten 
copies.  25  cents  ;  twenty-five  copies,  50  cents.  All  post- 
paid.    Stamps  acceptable  for  amounts  under  50  cents. 


DUKE     MED.     CENTER     LIB. 
HISTORICAL    COLLECTION 


